With regard to the last resolution, it was one in which we must all concur. The object, if attainable, would be extremely grateful to all of us.
The three resolutions were agreed to without a division. The committee then rose, and reported them to the House.
On the report being taken up, Mr. Randolph moved that the consideration of the two first resolutions be postponed till the third Monday of January.
Mr. Bayard hoped the motion for postponement would not prevail. The propositions were abstract ones, leading to inquiry, and the sooner they were acted upon, the better. The mode pursued by the gentleman from Virginia, if his simple object was to give notice, was the least happy that he could have devised, for it gave to gentlemen no opportunity to prepare themselves, as they were totally unacquainted, in the present stage of the business, as to what would be the alterations proposed. If a committee were now appointed, they would have time to deliberate on a subject of the utmost importance—one so complicated as to require great attention. When their report was made, he would be one of those who would ask from the candor of the House time to consider it.
Mr. Randolph said, he was at all times willing to accommodate gentlemen of every political description on proper occasions. Apprehending that his resolutions, if taken up in the House, would give rise to discussion, he had moved for their postponement, from a wish not to interfere with the desire of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and other gentlemen, to act on the apportionment bill. As his motion for postponement appeared likely to be itself productive of discussion, by which the time of the House would be exhausted, and the means he used defeat the end he had in view, he would withdraw his motion.
The House then agreed to the resolutions without a division.
Mr. Randolph moved the reference of the two first resolutions to the same committee.
He said, in reply to the gentleman from Delaware, that he made the motion respecting juries not because any complaint did at present exist of the exercise of the powers under which jurors were selected, but because they had not long since existed, and because in similar circumstances they might again exist. He was glad the gentleman from Delaware had no reason to complain of their present abuse. But this was no security against the future.
Mr. Bayard said, that he had spoken as he had done, not for the purpose of expressing any opinion that any abuse respecting juries had been recently removed under the present state of things; but to state that he had never heard of any complaints on this subject in the part of the Union from which he came; and he had particularly alluded to the mode of designating jurors in his State, which was by ballot. But if there were complaints in other parts of the Union, he would co-operate in any means that could be devised for removing them.
Mr. Smilie said, that since the gentleman from Delaware had introduced the subject, and had declared that no complaints existed, he would say that complaints had existed, that just grounds for them existed, and that they had been expressed in the loudest tone. And he would appeal to the gentleman from Delaware whether any man could be safe who was at the mercy of a marshal, who was the mere creature of the President.