Looking about me I saw surprise, perplexity, doubt, wonder, and uncertainty in every countenance, if I did not find conviction.

One fact embarrassed even me.
Our friends the Horizontals were evidently quite as much at fault as our opponents the Perpendiculars, instead of being, as I had good reason to hope, in an ecstasy of pleasure on hearing their cause sustained by an authority so weighty.
"Will the honorable member have the goodness to explain from what author he has quoted ?" one of the leading Perpendiculars at length ventured to inquire.
"The language you have just heard, Mr.Speaker," I resumed, believing that now was the favorable instant to follow up the matter, "is language that must find an echo in every heart--it is language that can never be used in vain in this venerable hall, language that carries with it conviction and command."-- I observed that the members were now fairly gaping at each other with wonder.--"Sir, I am asked to name the author from whom I have quoted these sententious and explicit words--Sir, what you have just heard is to be found in the Article IV., Clause 6, of the Great National Allegory--" "Order--order--order!" shouted a hundred raven throats.
I stood aghast, even more amazed than the house itself had been only the instant before.
"Order--order--order--order--order!" continued to be yelled, as if a million of demons were screeching in the hall.
"The honorable member will please to recollect," said the bland and ex-officio impartial speaker, who, by the way, was a Perpendicular, elected by fraud, "that it is out of order to use personalities." "Personalities! I do not understand, sir--" "The instrument to which the honorable member has alluded, his own good sense will tell him, was never written by itself--so far from this, the very members of the convention by which it was drawn up, are at this instant members of this house, and most of them supporters of the resolution now before the house; and it will be deemed personal to throw into their faces former official acts, in this unheard-of manner.

I am sorry it is my duty to say, that the honorable member is entirely out of order." "But, sir, the Sacred National--" "Sacred, sir, beyond a doubt--but in a sense different from what you imagine--much too sacred, sir, ever to be alluded to here.

There are the works of the commentators, the books of constructions, and specially the writings of various foreign and perfectly disinterested statesmen--need I name Ekrub in particular!--that are at the command of members; but so long as I am honored with a seat in this chair, I shall peremptorily decide against all personalities." I was dumfounded.

The idea that the authority itself would be refused never crossed my mind, though I had anticipated a sharp struggle on its construction.