Richmond daily times. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1853, 1851-10-01
THE DISCUSSION.

Messfs Bolts and CAsKIE Will address the CITIZENS
of Hanover on Saturday next at Old Church.
THE DISCUSSION.
The African Church was never more crowded
than it was Monday night, and rarely have the peo
Pile of Richmond heard more interesting discus
sion. Mr. Bolts led off in a speech of about
two hours, and Judge Caskie replied for the
same length of time. Such was the spirit with
which the two gentlemen bore themselves in the
contest, that the audience lost scarcely any of its
numbers before midnight, when, after some ne
gotiation between the candidates, ending in an
agreement to continue the discussion ON Friday
night, it was adjourned.
The positions maintained by the two gentle
men having been very fully exhibited in the re-
port we recently published OF their speeches in
Hanover, we do not think it necessary to give an
outline of their remarks. Each was able in his
peculiar way, and the friends of each seemed to
come away we'll satisfied with his performance.
Judge Caske made very remarkable an
nouncement in the outset. He said, it was true
he and his opponent were the regular nominees of
their respective parties but he declared in empha
tic terms, II prefer that This contest shall be con-
sidered contest bet,oeen John Minor Bots and
John S. Caskie." The Judge, accordingly, in
stead of arguing the questions in issue between
the two parties, applied himself entirely to a re-
view OF Mr.. Bolts personal course, and made it a
main point to revive his late controversy with
the Wing party and attempt to keep alive its Bit
terness. He dwelt also upon the opinions avow-
ed by Mr.. Bolts in reference to the constitution
atty Of the settled question of the Wilmot Proviso,
and his course in the late State Convention. Now
we do not say that a candidate for Congress is not
perfectly at liberty to dsparage an opponent by
assailing him on grounds peculiar to his own case
and not involving general party questions; but it
is proper to remark that a canvass which is thus
made to include multifarious issues, becomes
in fact merely personal and not party contest.
Judge Caskie is perfectly right in procaiming
that he desires it to be contest, not between the
Wing and Democratic parties of the Richmond
district but between two individual gentlemen
And there is pal pabe policy in this adroit STRAIT
egy of his, because he well knows that if the
| Wings choose to vote as party, they, having
clear majority must prevail.
On the great question of the Union, Judge Cas-
kie declared his opinions very distinctly. He
openly and unequvocay avowed that he believed
in the right of a State to secede at her pleasure
from the Union. Yet he also proclaimed himsel f
"a Union man." spoke of the Union as now,
notwithstanding the Compromise, comforting nval
liable BLESSINGS" upon the country, and described
the proposed secession of South Carolina as shat
mad, and every acay aorong pr@ect." Mr. Bolts
had anticipated this inconsistent position of the
Judges of protesting to be Union man, and at
the same time sustaining the right of South
Carolina to secede He showed that it was dis
unionsm in effect; for it tells South Carolina that
although she may secede for cause which Judge
Caskie thinks insufficient and wrong yet, he
will stand by her in the act. Under such doc
trine the existence o. the Union must depend en-
trely upon the will and pleasure Of any single
State
Judge Caske, with much art, refrained from
maintaining his doctrine of secession by any d.
rect argument from the terms of the constitution
or the lights of contemporaneons expositions. He
fail ed entirely to notice the conclusive authority,
which Mr.. Bolts adduced in Mr.. Madison's let
ter to Alexander Hamilton, written while the
New York Convention was celebrating upon the
ratification of the federal constitution and in reply
to Hamilton's inquiry whether ratification, with
the reservation of the right to withdraw, would
be sufficient to make New York member of the
Union. The answer of Mr.. Madison was, that
the idea OF ratifying with such reservation was
mooted in the Virginia Convention at Richmond
and it was abandoned proposing no ratifca-
ton at all Ever since this correspondence
was made public, we have considered it
as dssipating all shadow of pretext for the
doctrine of secession, as held in South Caro-
lima and by Judge Caske. 1t embodies not
merely the authority OF Mr. Madisons great
name against the doctrine but it certifies histori-
cally that the great States Of Virginia and New
York entered the Union repudiating the right
of withdrawal Further than this, the correspon-
dence establishes beyond dispute, that the
words used by the Virginia Convention in
the act of ratification, and which asserted the
right of ''the people of the United States" to
resume the powers granted to the Federal Govern
ment, whenever those powers should be perverted
to their injury not intended to assert, as they
really do not in TACT the right Of secession. Judge
Caskie, like the Richmond Enquirer, endeavoured
to strain this language of the Virginia ratifca-
ton, and the similar language of the resolution
offered by Judge Robertson in the Richmond
meeting last year, into sanction of the secession
doctrine, and his only argument in favour of his
construction was, that if the words did not mean
secession, they must mean revolution, and, as
every body admits the right of revolution, it would
have been absurd to assert it. But this view is
without force in itself, and is easily reued by pre-
cedent and fact. Was it nonsensical in the au-
thors of the Declaration of independence to af-