tution is not adopted as a whole by twelve o'clock, unpleasant as the duty may be, when the hour arrives, I will be compelled to adjourn the Convention sine die. The Constitution not being adopted, the Convention would necessarily be obliged to re-assemble after a lapse of sufficient time, perhaps of twenty days, in order to give notice to the members Time is rapidly passing, and I adjure the house not to throw away the important opportunity now offered of adopting the Constitution.

Mr. B. F. RANDOLPH said he would not have made his motion, if the President had not stated that such a motion would be in order.

The PRESIDENT said many things are in order which are unconstitutional. I believe the result of the motion, if decided affirmatively, would be illegal. Many things might be in order for the Convention to do, but the result of the action would be illegal. I do believe and think I would be sustained by any parliamentary lawyer in saying, that when the house has agreed to adjourn at any particular time, it is not in the power of the house to change its decree. Some of the members have retired; they cannot form a portion of the prolonged session without much delay, and they might reasonably protest against its subsequent action as a legal and constitutional body. Looking at it, therefore, in the very best light, such action would place the Convention în à doubtful position. At present, you are a body whose legality and constitutionality cannot be questioned, and it is my fervent wish that you shall so remain to the end

Several motions were made for indefinite postponement of the motion to recind, which was agreed to.

Mr. L. S. LANGLEY. I desire to record my vote "no" on the question of postponement.

The question was then put upon the adoption of the Constitution, when it was unanimously carried.

The PRESIDENT. I now declare that this instrument, containing fifteen articles and two hundred and thirteen sections, having received the requisite number of readings, and passed by the Convention, has been adopted as the organic law of the land and Constitution of the State of South Carolina, subject to the ratification of its people. And may God in His infinite mercy and wisdom grant that it may work good to our whole country.

At this announcement, the Convention spontaneously rose to its feet and broke forth in loud and prolonged cheering.

After the applause had subsided, Mr. J. M. RUTLAND offered the following, which was agreed to:

Resolved, That the President of this Convention be requested to forward, at an early day, to the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives at Washington, respectively, a copy of the Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Petitions, recommending that this Convention do petition ongress to remove the political disabilities of certain persons named in said report, together with a copy of this resolution.

Mr. T. J. ROBERTSON moved that the President temporarily vacate the Chair.

Mr. N. G. PARKER moved that Mr. T. J. COGHLAN, of Sumter, take the Chair, which was agreed to.

Mr. T. J. COGHLAN, on taking the Chair, returned his thanks for the honor conferred. It would, he said, be a great pleasure to render a tribute of esteem from the Convention to their noble President-such a tribute as would do him everlasting honor.

Mr. J. T. ROBERTSON then offered the following, which was unanimously agreed to, with great cheering and applause :

Resolved, That for the very able and important discharge of the responsible and arduous duties, gratuitously performed, of presiding over the deliberations of this Convention, and for the uniform kindness and forbearance shown at all times to all its members, the thanks of this Convention be tendered to Hʊn. A. G. MACKEY, our President

The PRESIDENT, on resuming the Chair, spoke as follows:

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION :-After an arduous labor of two months, we are at last about to part, and the time has arrived which admonishes us that having accomplished, to the best of our abilities, the duty which had been imposed upon us by our constituents, nothing is left for us to do but affectionately to bid each other farewell.

I look back, as I trust you all do, with much self-gratulation, upon the hours that we have spent together. There are with us no unpleasant reminiscences of those acrimonious bickerings which, in all deliberative assemblies, are too often incidental to the excitement of debate and the attrition of antagonistic minds. Engaged in the consideration of topics of the highest importance, differences of opinion have necessarily existed, but those differences, although always boldly expressed and sturdily maintained, have never been characterized by the petulance of personal retort. Indeed, I am sure that the history of parliamentary bodies has never presented a more uninterrupted example of the capacity of men to differ widely on certain subjects, and yet with friendly forbearance to agree to differ The members of this Convention, on all ccasions, where there has not been unanimity, may have been oppo ents in opinion, but have always been friends in counsel.

For myself, I do not know that I have ever said one word to wound the feelings of a delegate. If I have done so, the fault has been unin

tentional, and has escaped my recollection. I am sure that no word has been uttered by any one of the members to me, which the most exacting man would have wished unsaid. To me, as their presiding officer, the delegates of this Convention hove ever been most kind, considerate and respectful, and for these demonstrations of your good will I am most profoundly grateful. In my own course I have endeavored to be thoroughly impartial. Whatever have been my private opinions on any of the subjects under deliberation, I have sought, and I hope successfully, to forget them while I controlled debate, and have tried to rule on every question, not as my predilections might have led me, but as the law of parliament and the rules of the house required. And I feel proud as well as grateful, that the house has evinced its confidenɔe in my honesty as a presiding officer in this, that no decision I have made has ever been overruled.

The work which we were sent here to do was most momentous to the Commonwealth which we represent, and the members of this Convention are, I think, worthy of much commendation for the improvements they have made in the organic law, when their labors are compared with those of their predecessors. We here present to our constituents a Constitution in which, for the first time in the political history of the State, the great doctrine of manhood suffrage is distinctly recognized, and all the rights are secured to every citizen to which nature and nature's God have entitled him. Here, have we stricken every vestige of serfdom from our institutions, and that too in so emphatic and unambiguous a way, that no doubt can be entertained of our determination that this relic of barbarism shall never again, in any form, pollute our soil. Here we have made every needful arrangement for the free education of our people, so that if future legislators shall carry out in good faith the provisions which we have ordained on this vital subject, in a few years the stain of ignorance which now pollutes our history will be forever oblite rated, and the happy period will have arrived when no son or daughter of South Carolina will be unable to read and write. Thus have we broadly sown the seeds of public education, and thus shall we, in no distant time, reap the rich harvest of public virtue. Crime and ignorance are inseparable companions We have stricken a heavy blow at both, and may look for the natural and inevitable result in the elevation of all our people to a social, political and religious eminence, to which, under the former Constitution and laws of the State, they had never attained.

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Here, too, we have obliterated from our political system that most pernicious heresy of State sovereignty-a heresy which, for nearly half a century, taught by our leaders, had, like an ignis fatuis, led the people of South Carolina, on more than one occasion, to the brink of rebellion, until there arose at length, as a necessary result of this doctrine, one of the most fratracidal wars that the world ever saw. The theory of a divided allegiance, and of a sovereignty within a sovereignty, alike incongruous with all the principles of political science and with the system of national power established by our fathers, has received from you a death blow. No longer, if the Constitution you have adopted should he ratified by the people, will there be any danger of a future rebellion,

in which the glorious flag of our common country-a flag which has often "braved the battle and the breeze"-shall be treated by a portion of the nation with insult, and for it an ensign to be substituted, consecrated by no national traditions, and simply the novel insignia of a disrupted Confederacy. In establishing this principle of a paramount allegiance to the national Government, you have thrown a protection around the national life for the future, and you have justified the acts of those Union men who, in the midst of a wide-spread and threatening rebellion, nobly stood by this doctrine you have announced, and would not acknowledge that the State, however much they loved it as their home, could supplant, in their affections, the nation from which they received protection

I speak not of these, as parts of the results of our labors, in any spirit of acrimony toward those who have heretofore neglected these great duties of legislators-for I would desire to bury the past in that oblivion which best befits it, or to hold it only as a beacon light to warn us from its follies and its perils in the future-but because as stewads of a great trust we have a right to show to our constituents how we have discharged the duties of the stewardship which they had confided to us.

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To the people of South Carolina, we submit the Constitution which we were instructed to frame, in the confident expectation that its mani fest superiority over all other Constitutions by which this Commonwealth has hitherto been governed, will secure for it a triumphant ratification. We do not claim for ourselves a pre-eminence of wisdom or virture, but we do claim that we have followed in the progressive advancement of the age; that we have been hold and honest enou h and wise enough to trample obsolete and unworthy prejudices under foot, and thus have been enabled, with impartial legislation, to provide for the civil and political interests of all men of every rank, station or race, within the borders of our beloved State.

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But the painful moment of separation has arrived, and that word which friends always dread to hear has to be pronounced Associates, I bid you an affectionate farewell, and wishing you all a safe and happy return to your respective homes, I now, in accordance with the resolution of the house, declare the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina to be adjourned sine die.

The Convention then adjourned sine die.