January 28, 1869 (3)

Mr. BECK. Mr. Speaker, I propose to reply to the argument of the gentleman from Massachusetts, ^alr. Boutwell,] who introduced, elaborate 'and carefully considered doubtless set forth, the views of those advised the proposed law: first, because hisTs the only speeeh Oh that side which represents the views of those who present it; and second, because it is through the politeness of his colleagues, Messrs Marshall and Eldridge, the Democratic members of .the committee, that lam entitled to the floor. Coming as it does from a majority of the Committee on the Judiciary, the leading lawyers of the House and the country, the measure is vou ehed for by no common authority. I speak of the bill, because it was on that his argument was made, though my remarks will apply with equal force to the amendment, and are so intended. The proposed amendment to the Constitution, unwise as I think it, is one Congress may possibly have a right to propose. Indeed, I suppose Congress may propose anything that two thirds of both Houses concur in. The proposition amounts to nothing until the Legislatures of three fourths of the States ratify and approve it. This singular anomaly is presented for the first time in the history of this, or, I suppose; of any other country. The States are asked to so enlarge the grant of powers in the Constitution as to enable Congress, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the right of any citizen of the United States to vote in any State, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of slavery, the constitution and laws of the State to. the contrary notwithstanding. The proposition asking for the grant of power from the States, by whom alone when thus proposed it can be granted through their Legislatures, admits upon its face that the power to grant or refuse to grant the proposition or request of Congress is lodged in the States, and that if they refuse to transfer it Congress has no right to exercise it; and yet before the proposition, has received the sanction of a single State Congress proposes, by the bill now under consideration, to exercise all the power which tlie proposed amendment would give it, and which, for aught we know, every State may refuse to surrender when the proposition is submitted to them. The reputation of the majority of the Judiciary Committee of this House will not be promoted in the eyes of the civilized world by the serious presentation of such anomalous and inconsistent propositions. To ask States to grant powers, and at the same time to exercise them in spite of the constitutions and laws of the States who are asked to make the grant is, it seems to me, too absurd for grown men seriously to consider. If we have the power now the proposed amendment to the Constitution is folly. If such an amendment is required to confer the power upon us the proposed law is the grossest and most shameless usurpation and oppression.

When the distinguished gentleman was goading his party on with the lash of necessity, and telling them it was too late to look back—that their only safety lay in consummating the revolution they had inaugurated—1 could understand him; but when he urgedthat both the amendment and the law were indispensable, because the party was divided in opinion as to where the power now was, I hardly think he was intelligible to himself.

The idea that this is a nation—that the national Congress is vested with all power necessary to preserve whatever a majority of Congress may consider the life of the nation which, properly speaking, now means the life of the Radical party, was urged with a vehemence only equaled by the contempt with which the idea that this is a Union of coequal, confederated States was scouted and sneered at.

Whatever stress may be laid on the language of the preamble, the fact remains that we are living under a Constitution framed by States, ratified by States, and which has .been and can be only amended or altered—which is the better word when applied to th© present and the last so «alled amendment—by States., Wears in no sense a nation, and whenever we become so we will be a centralized despotism in some form. The UniteclStates of America will have ceased to exist; anarchy or empire will h ve come. Nothing shortof separate, Independent State governments can manage andcontrol 'the great, diversified, widely separated and often conflicting interests of this people. Perhaps the best way to determine who framed the Constitution is to ascertain who has tbeT power to alter and amend it, as it can hardly be supposed thatits framers would transfer to a power other than its maker the power under the guise of amendments to alter and destroy it. How can it be amended? The Constitution says:

Only by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress."

This Congress, of course, prefers and proposes the former, for the very obvious reason that it does not desire nor intend that the people of the States shall have any right to deliberate or decide on the propositions, choosing rather to trust their partisans in the State Legislatures, all of whom have been elected already, without reference to and without any knowledge on the partof the people who elected them that they would be called upon to consider so grave a proposition as the annulling of their own State constitutions on the question of suffrage.

In the action of the State Legislatures or in the State conventions there is no approach on this question to popular equality. Florida is the equal Of New York, Nevada neutralizes Pennsylvania, Rhode Island is the peer of Ohio; while Delaware and Nebraska, Oregon and Kansas offset Illinois and Indiana, Missouri and Kentucky; yet the last census shows that New York alone had seven times the population of all the seven small States I have named; and it shows further that the seven States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Kentucky, the great central belt, had about a million and a quarter more white population than all the other States and Territories of the United States combined; yet the constitutions of these seven States, and the united, and if you please unanimous, will and voice of all their people can be constitutionally set at naught, disregarded, and overthrown by the action of the Legislatures or conventions of other States—it might be representing not only a minority, but less than one tenth of the American people. In view of these palpable and indisputable facts, what becomes of the twaddle about" We, the people," in constitutional changes and amendments? Is a citizen of New York less entitled. to all the rights and privileges of a citizen of the United States than a citizen of Florida? Is his voice and vote less potential than that of a citizen of Delaware, Oregon, or Nevada? Certainly not in any matter where the power is in the people as a people. Then all are free and equal. "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States." So says the original Constitution; so says your fourteenth amendment.

How, then, does it happen that sixty thousand people in Nevada in the exercise of the highest rights of sovereignty, the alteration or amendment not only of the fundamental law— the Constitution of the United States—but the destruction of the constitution and laws of the State of New York, for example, not only without the consent, but against the will and solemn protest of the four million people of that State, have as much power as sixty six times their number residing in New York? Simply because the changes are not made by the people but by the States, to whom the power was reserved when the Constitution was formed. If, as the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts asserts, ten at least of the great States of this Union, Pennsylvania and Ohio included, have not now and never have had a republican form of government, and if, as lie -contends, it is not only the right but the d ufcy of the United States to interfere and guaranty it to them against their will because they have seen fit, in accordance with their own State constitutions, some of which were in existence before the Federal Constitution was formed, and under which they were acting when they aided in its formation, to determine for themselves who should and who should not exercise the elective franchise within their borders—if, I say, that constitutes their State governments aristocracies, which we in Congress are in duty bound to subvert, what will the gentleman say about the republicanism of one citizen of Nevada or Florida having the same power over the fundamental laws of the United States and the several States as sixty six citizens of the State of New York have? What doctrine of republican equality and right gives New England, with less than three and a half millions of population, twelve Senators, while the State of New York, with a population of over four and a half millions, has only two 1

Passing from the more general positions taken by the distinguished representative of the Judiciary Committee to his specifications I may state them under three heads. He claimed the existence of the power now sought to be exercised as being vested in Congress by the Constitution prior to the adoption of any of the late amendments. First, because there was noex press grant of absolute power over the question of suffrage granted to the States, but rather a qualified one which was set forth in that portion of section four of article one of the Constitution, which provides that— times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof." Admitting as he did what could not well be denied, that this, taken in connection with that part of section two of article one which prescribes that—

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of member? chosen every second year by the people ot the several States, and the electors in each State spall have the qualificationsroquisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature," would give full authority over the subject of suffrage to the States but for the limitations imposed in what may properly be called his second proposition in the following portion of section four aforesaid, to wit:

"But the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of1 choosing Senators." Which authority he contended, especially over the "manner of holding elections," gives this Congress full power to pass the proposed bill. His third proposition is that none of the States which prohibit negro suffrage are, because of that prohibition, republican in form, but are all mere aristocracies, and that Congress in order to guaranty to each of these States a Republican form of government is in duty bound to impose universal negro suffrage upon them, set aside their State constitutions, annul their laws, and make them conform to the orders of this most august and omnipotent Congress. I will notice each of these positionsbriefly in the short time allotted to me before I notice his argument as to the effect which the fourteenth amendment has on the question, and I can only suggest objections to each, want of time making it impossible to elaborate them.

As to the first ground assumed by the gentleman from Massachusetts, I have only to say that it is the first time I have ever heard it intimated that the States were dependent on the Constitution for a grant of power in order to be able properly to exercise it. Oa the contrary it is well known and universally admitted that their delegates met and framed that instrument as the representatives of free, equal sovereign, and independent States. That'

"Tho Constitution of the United States is one of limited and expressly delegated powers, which can only be exercised by the General Government as granted, or in the cases enumerated."•

That—

The Government of the United States can elaita p powers which are not granted to it by tho Constitution, and the powers actually granted are such as are expressly given or given -by neeessary implication."

That—

This instrument contains an enumeration of powers expressly granted by the people to tfteir Govern-, ment.". w? And, as if to render this construction c ri n as if to make assurance doubly sure, it provided that—

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."

Why, sir, when a lawyer looks into a State constitution to see whether a law of the State is in conflict with it, what does he do? He looks to see whether or not, there is anything in the constitution prohibiting the Legislature from so acting, because all the power of the State is in the Legislature of the State except wliat is taken from it by the State or Federal Constitution. But when he looks into tho Federal Constitution to see if a law of Congress is constitutional he takes exactly the opposite view. Se looks to see whether that power has been granted to Congress, and if it has not been expressly or by necessary implication granted to the Federal Government then the power is not there; it is in the States or the people thereof. If the gentleman will look at the decision of Chief Justice Marshall in the case of McCullough vs. Maryland, he will find that the words" necessary and proper" do not mean everything that Congress thinks is nece s sary. It must be necessary and proper. You must use constitutional means to carry out constitutional ends.

13ut 1 will not elaborate this idea. The gentleman from Massachusetts is triumphantly answered, and all his arguments overthrown by the very able and logical argument of the distinguished lawyer and advocate from Ohio, [Mr. Bingham,] when on the floor of this House he was urging the passage of an amendment to the Constitution for the purpose of investing Congress with the power now assumed by the gentleman from Massachusetts to have existed, always. It was delivered on the 28th day of February, 18ti6, and may be found in the Globe, volume fifty seven page 1093. I adopt the following portion of it as expressing my ideas better than I can express them myself.

Mr. Bingham said:

"I beg leave to read, in confirmation of the truth of what I say, an utterance made in the hearing of the whole people of this country in 1788, when the t Constitution was on trial for its deliverance. I read from No. 15 of the i edei alibt, a paper written by James Madison:

The powers reserved to the Federal States will extend to all theobjectswhieh intheordinary course' of affairs, concern the lives, iibeities, and properties ol the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.'

X submit that this is the textof the Constitution.' except as to thenewamendmentprohibiting slavery, and providing for legislation to prevent it exceptas punishment for crime, ltstands as therulingof the Supreme Court of the United States in the great case of McCullough vn. The State of Maryland, in 4 Wheaton. it standsas therulingof tho same tribunal in the ease of Ogden vs. Gibbons, in D Peters. It stands, in short, as the uniform rulingof tlieSupreme Court of the United States, concurringwith the continued action of the other Departments of the Government from the year 1789 till this hour, there being no law anywhere upon our statute books to punish penally any State officer for denying in any State to any citizen of the United States protection in the rights of life liberty and property. It stands as the very text of the Constitution itself, which declares that—

'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States- respectively or to the people.'

The word' powers' controls the whole question, i he Government of the United States has no legislative powers, gave the express grants and the general grant to pass all laws which shall bo necessary and proper to carry into execution all other powers vested by the Constitution m the Government of the united States, or in any department or any officer thereof, and the implied powers necessary to carry the express powers into effect, A grant of power, according to all construction, is a very different thing from a bill of rights. In support of what I have said on this point I ask attention to the following citatio ns

MeCnllough us. Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 405, Marshall, C.. J., says:-,_

The Coubtitutioa of the United States is oae of limited and expressly delegated' powers, which can only be exercised asgranted, or in cases enumerated.' "Speaking of the authority given to Congress by the last clause of the first article, eighth section, of the Constitution, Jodge Story in his Commentaries, -section 1238, says:

"'The plain import of this clause is, that Congress shall bavo all tho incidental and instrumental powers necessary and proper to carry into execution all the express powers. It neither enlarges any power specifically gran ted, nor is it a grant of any newponer to Congress.'

In Martin vs. Hunter s Lessee, 1 Wheaton, 32 5 it is said:

'The Government of the United States can claim no powers which are not granted to if. by the Constitution, and the powers actually granted aro such as are expressly given -or given by necessary implication.'■

In Gibbons us. Ogden 9 Yvheaton 187, Chief Justice Marshall, speaking of the Constitution, says:

"'This instrument contains an enumeration of powers expressly granted by the people to their Government.'

In Kent s Commentaries, volume one, pages 388- 390, there is this language:

'The correct principle is that when ever, the terms in which tho power was granted to Congress, or the nature of the power required that it should be exclusively exercised by Congress, the subject was as completely taken away from the State Legislatures as if they had been expressly forbidden to act upon it.'

'You have the express power to define the punishment of trea on the express power to 'punish the counterfeiting of coin or securities of the United States; the express power to define and punish piracies and felonies committed upon the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; exclusive legislative power within this District: express powers to govern all Territories; but where is the express power to define and punish crimes committed in any State by its official officers in violation of the rights of citizens and persons as declared in the Constitution? And from what expressly delegated power inthe Constitution can any such power be implied? Passing the anti slavery amendment, is there" any one prepared to saytbat the Bill of Rights confers express', legislative power oil Congress to punish State officers for a willful and corrupt disregard of their oaths and oppressive and flagrantly unjust violationsof the declared rights of every citizen and every free man in every free State? The words of Madison cited are very significant: 'The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which concern the lives liberties and properties of the people.' The fact is that Congress has never by penal enactmentin all fhepastattemptedto enforce these rights of the people in any State of the Union."

The second proposition, to wit, that the portion of section four of article one of the Constitution which provides that Congress may at any time alter such regulations as the Legislatures of the .States may prescribe as to the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, invests Congress with any power to determine who shall and who shall not exercise the right of suffrage in the States, seems to me even more absurd than- the first. What Patrick Henry may have said, bitterly opposed as he was to many of the provisions of the Constitution; what any man in Massachusetts may have said about the power of Congress over suffrage in the States under this clause, I «are not. The language of the instrument and the uniform recognition of this power as one belonging exclusively, to the several States sufficiently refutes all their theories. But when it is asserted that Mr. Madison asserted or admitted that Congress had any such power I deny it. He took precisely the opposite ground, asserting that this power was not only absolute In the States, but being as to Representatives in Congress required to be fixed and determined in the constitutions of the States, it was equally beyond the authority of Congress or the fluctuating legislation of the State Legislatures. I read from the first part of No. 52 of the Federalist, pages 242 213

From the more general inquiries pursued in the four last papers I pass on to a more particular examination ot the several parts of the Government. rm k e°in the House of Representatives.

liie nrst view to betaken of this part of the Government relates to the Qualifications of the electors and the elected.

"Those of the former are to be the same with those ci the electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislatures. The definition of the ri bt of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican Government. It was incumbent ,9^ the Convention, therefore, to define and establish this right inthe Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper, for the reason just mentioned. To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason that ifc woiiPa have rek ered too dependent on the- State governments that branch of. thefFed ral Government which ought tu be dependent on the people alone. To have reduced the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule would probably have been as dissatisfactory to some of the States as it would have been difficult to lie Convention. Xhe provision made by the Convention appears, therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State, because it is conlormable to the standard already established, or which may be established by the State itself. Itwill be sate to the United States, because being fixed by the Stateconstitutions itisnotalterable by theState governments, and it cannot be feared that the people ol the States will alter this part of their constitutions in such a manner as to abridge the rights secured to them by the Federal Constitution."

Can language be plainer? Could Mr. Madison have expressed his conviction more clearly that the question of suffrage was not only vested in the States, but, so far as electors for Senators and Representatives in Congress are concerned, they are defined and fixed in the constitutions ot the States, so that their rights are secured against the prejudices and vascillations of even State legislation, as the same persons who can elect the State Legislatures can always vote for members of Congress? Why does he regard this section of the Constitution as eminently proper and satisfactory? Because suffrage being a fundamental article of republican government it would have been improper to have left it open for the occasional regulation of Congress, and so far as representation in Congress is Concerned, which is the only thing the United States was concerned about or had anything to do with, it is safe and satisfactory both to the States and the United States by having the right of the electors fixed, defined, crystallized, as it were, in the constitutions of the States themselves, which it was, as he says, not to be feared that they would alter so as to abridge the rights secured to them by the Federal Constitution. But this bill goes greatly beyond what either the gentleman from Massachusetts or any of the learned committee for whom he speaks will venture to assert that they can find any pretense of constitutional warrant; for it declares null and void the constitutions and laws of every State, and punishes with heavy fines and Prolonged imprisonment all State officers who refuse to receive the votes of negroes in elections for electors for President and Vice President or for members of the Legislature of the State in which they may reside. What section or clause of the Constitution gives Congress the right to regulate even the times, places, or manner of holding elections for President or for members of the Legislatures of the several States? I ask this question because, unless the language of the instrument itself and the uniform decisions of the tribunals provided by it to expound its meaning are all set aside and disregarded, if the power is not given either by express grant or by necessary implication, it not only does not exist in Congress, but is expressly reserved to the States respectively or to the people. As to who shall be electors for the State Legislatures the Constitution is silent, even as to the time, place, and manner of their action, and is among the absolutely reserved powers, while the electors for President shall be appointed in such manner as the State Legislatures may direct, negativing all idea of power in Congress even over the manner of the election. Yet this bill assumes control over all.

The Constitution was not designed by its framers to interfere with or in this matter to limit or control in any way the absolute sovereign power of the States in any manner, except to secure to the people thereof representation in the Federal Congress, and by the powers granted to Congress in the fourth section of the first article that right was secured by giving Congress control over the times, places, and manlier of holding elections for Representatives there. When Mr. Hamilton, m thefift y mnih number ot the Federalist, vindicated the wisdom of this provision, and used the language on vvliK h so raucli emphasis has been laid, and which has been so much perverted that' its propriety rests upon the evidence of this plain proposition that every government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation." he uttered only an axiomatic truth, and explained fully what he meant in this application of it. The people of each State had the right to be represented in the Congress of the United States. The people of each of the other States had the right to expect, perhaps to require, the presence there of the Representatives of all the States., It was well known that each State was compelled to elect periodically a State Legislature; us- very existence required that to be done. Certain classes of the citizens of each were of necessity obliged to be qualified electors for Representatives in the most numerous branch of the Legislature. The numbers and qualifications of these electors might vary in every State; negroes, women, foreigners, might be admitted to or excluded from the privilege. Universal suffrage or educational or property .restrictions or qualifications might be allowed or imposed as each State thought most conducive to its own prosperity, security, and peace. With all that the United States had no concern and no right to interfere. But knowing that some class of citizens in each State must have the qualifications for electors for their Legislatures, it provided that that class, whether numerous or restricted, should by virtue of these qualifications possess all the qualifications requisite for electors for Senators and Representatives in the Congress of the United States. Indeed, all the States, had, when the Constitution was formed, State constitutions republican in form, at least in the opinion of its framers and of all the statesmen and jurists who have succeeded them until within a few years past, the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts and a few others similarly organized have discovered tluit all these men were fools, and that these constitutions were the most odious aristocracies; but of that hereafter. A class of electors being thus secured beyond all peradventure who could vote for members ot Congress, it was equally important that the privilege of exercising the right should be assured to them beyond all contingency.

The times, places, and manner of holding such elections were to be prescribed by the State Legislatures. Congress was not expected to interfere except in case of failure or refusal of the local Legislatures to make proper provisions, but the State was not to be left unrepresented in Congress nor the qualified electors therein deprived of their right of representation in the common council of the Union because of the failure or refusal of the State Legislatures from any cause, no matter what, to furnish them the means legally to elect men to represent them. Hence the provision that '•Congress may at anytime bylaw make or alter such regulations" as to the times, places, and manner of holding elections for members of Congress. This provision gave the Federal Government the power to use again and apply as he did the words of Mr. Hamilton, li that every Government ought to contain within itself the means of its own preservation." As long as there is in any State any number of electors qualified to vote for members of the most numerous branch of the State Legislatures, as long as there is a man who has the constitutional qualifications of a member of Congress, this body has the constitutional power, and it is its duty to see that, the electors and candidates are not only allowed but furnished proper facilities for the exercise of their rights and privileges.

If the State Legislatures refuse to fix a time for holding such elections, or fix an improper time; if they fail to designate places or to authorize them to be designated, or if they are unsuitable or inadequate, or if they fail to appoint or cause to be appointed suitable persons to conduct and determine the result of such election, or in any regard fail to conduct them in a proper manner, I take it to be not only the right but the duty of Congress by proper laws to provide and prescribe the proper times, places, and manner of conducting such elections, which, when complied with by the electors in the States, will entitle the Representativeschosen by them unconformity thereto to take their seats in Congress and represent their States with the same binding effect as if all the machinery of the election had been provided by the States themselves. That seems to mo to be the whole scope, intent, and meaning of the constitutional provision upon which the gentleman from Massachusetts seeks to overthrow and subvert the constitutions and laws of at least ten States of this Union, most of them older than the Constitution itself, and under which or under others not materially different their people were living when they framed it.

I venture the assertion here before the House and the country, and in the face of the long array of distinguished names which the gentleman from Massachusetts has paraded, and extracts from whose speeches he has published, that all liis authorities, with perhaps one exception, sustain me and my views and contradict him and his. Story, Kent, the Supreme Court, all the expounders of the Constitution, official and unofficial, areagainsthim; and even Patrick Henry, the bitterest and most unrelenting of all the opponents of the Constitution, whose opinions were all overruled and disregarded, only objected to this provision because, as he says:

"Accordingto the mode prescribed Congress may tell you that they have a rieht to make the vote ol one gentleman go as far as the votes of one hundred poor men. The power over the manner admits of the most dangerous latitude."

He even did not believe they had any such power, but he says Congress may tell you that they have this dangerous power. Nearly a century has rolled on since he spoke, and no Congress ever thought of it. He was about to go down to posterity as a false prophet, a croaker, or an alarmist, when the gentleman from Massachusetts and his friends set up the claim and have verified his fears, and now cite him as authority to sustain them in their revolutionary course.

But I must hurry on. The third proposition of the gentleman from Massachusetts is that no State which excludes a portion of its citizens from the exercise of the right of suffrage is republican ia form; and as by section four of article four of the Constitution "the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government,' it is our duty to pass this bill to comply with that guarantee. Thedistinguished sourcefrom which this proposition emanates alone entitles it to serious consideration. If I or any other common member of this House had enunciated and advocated it we would not have been listened to; it would have been treated simply as an absurdity. I suppose it will hardly be denied that the framers of the Constitution knew what constituted a republican form of government, and that each of the thirteen States that by the Constitution formed and constituted the United States were recognized then as having republican forms of government. It is hard to understand how they could have become parties to and have ratified the Federal compact if it had not been so. Mr. Madison, whose views coincided with those of Mi*. Hamilton, in the forty third number of the Federalist assumed as. an unquestioned and undoubted proposition that each of the States then had governments republican m form. He says, when speaking of when and how the Federal Government can interfere under the guarantee clause in the Constitution: It may possibly be asked whether it may not become a pretext for alterations in the State governments, without the concurrence of the States themselves. It may be answered that if the (general Government should interpose by virtue of ttns constitutional authority, it will be of course bound to pursue the authority. But the autbontyextends no further than to aguarant ee of a republican form ot government, which supposes a preexisting govern ment of the form which is to be guarantied As long, therefore, as the existing republican forms are con tinued by the States they are guarantied by the 1 Federal Constitution. Whenever the States may choose to substitute other republican Jurats they tuveauglit to do so, and to claim the Federal guarantee .or the latter. The only restriction imposed on them that they shall not exchange republican to/ ana repuD hoan constitutions.

"Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, quoting these opinions of Hamilton and Madison, says:

The Federalist has spoken with so much force and propriety upon this subject that itsupersedes all further reasoning."'

Let us see wherein these States, having then beyond all question governments republican in form are now less so than they were then; let us see by what act or change they have lost their republican forms of government, so as to authorize the United States to interfere and restore it under her obligation to guaranty it to them.

Twelve out of the original thirteen States were then slave holding States to begin with. Now slavery is abolished in all of them. They had republican forms of government while they held slaves and excluded the whole negro race from the right of suffrage. Will it be contended that the abolition of slavery has made their forms of government anti-republican? I presume the gentleman from Massachusetts and his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee will not so contend. Suffrage in nearly all these twelve States was confirmed when the constitution was adopted to free white men, and in a number of them property qualifications were prescribed as a condition precedent to the exercise by the citizen of the right of suffrage. Yet Mr. Madison, in the extract I have read, assumed as an undoubted and indisputable fact that the then e existing State governments were all republican in form.

Massachusetts by her constitution of 1780, under which she maintained her republican form of government without amendment on the question of suffrage till 183G, limited the right of suffrage thus by article four, chapter one:

"Every male person, being tiventy one years of age, and resident in any particular town in the Commonwealth for the space of one year next preceding, having aireebold estate within the same town, of the uuuual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds, shall have the right to vote in the choice of a representative or representatives for the said town."

That property qualification doubtless deprived half her white citizens of the right of suffrage, yet none of her statesmen of that day for a moment supposed that her government was anti-republican, or that the Congress of the United States, under the constitution she had helped to create, could set aside her constitution and laws because she had an aristocratic and not a republican form of government. No one knows better than the gentleman from Massachusetts that suffrage was not universal in any of the republics of ancient times. None knows better than he that it was not universal in any of the republics of America when they united in the formation of the Federal Constitution, and none knows better than he that in the changes made by the thirteen original States in their constitutions after the Federal Constitution was adopted a large majority of them limited, and still limit, the right of suffrage to white male citizens; and he knows as well as any man on this floor, and every school boy knows, that every State that was admitted into the Union after the formation of the Federal Constitution, prior to 18G2, without a single exception, limited the right of suffrage in their constitutions to white male citizens, and that all of those that changed their constitutions in any way prior to 1804 continued the limitation, and confined the right of suffrage to white male citizens. Yet all these States so admitted into the Union, slaveholding and free, were admitted by a distinct resolution of Congress, in each case declaring that they were so admitted under the constitutional provision authorizing the admission of new States, because they had each adopted constitutions republican in form.

The resolution admitting Illinois and Indiana, which can both be found in volume third of the United States Statutes at Large page uot>, may be taken as specimens of all the others. They fully verify what I say. Look for a moment at the changes made by the States in their State constitutions since the Constitution of the United States was adopted, or since their admission into the Union as States, and what do we find upon the subject of suffrage? I have the State constitutions all before me, and they can be examined by any member who desires to do so. New Hampshire, by her constitution of 1792, and Maine in 1819, excluded paupers only. Massachusetts in 1836 excluded paupers and all those who could not read the Constitution in the English language and write his name. Rhode Island in 1842 excluded, and still excludes, all naturalized citizens of the United States, and imposes a property qualification on all others. Connecticut in 1818 limited the right of suffrage to white males over twenty one years of age. New Jersey in 1844, Pennsylvania in 1838, Maryland in 1851, Delaware in 1831, imposed the same limitation. New York in 1846 excluded all negroes from the right of suffrage, except those who had resided for three years in the State and owned freehold estates worth $250, no such restriction being imposed upon white men.

I will not speak of any of the original thirteen that attempted to secede, though they all, while undoubted members of the Union, limited suffrage to white men. Of those admitted after the adoption of the Constitution, Ohio in 1851 formed a new constitution, and limited suffrage to white male citizens; Indiana did the same thing in the same year; Illinois did so in 1847, and Michigan made the same provision in 1850. Iowa imposed the same restriction on this right in 1855, and Kansas in 1859. A similar limitation was made by Wisconsin in 1848, and the constitutions of Minnesota and Oregon contain precisely the same limitations. Congress admitted Texas and California with similar restrictions, while Missouri in 1848, and Kentucky in 1849, placed precisely the same restrictions and qualifications in their State constitutions, and these restrictions and limitations remain in nearly all the constitutions of the States I have named to this day. In view of all these facts it is amazing to hear a gentleman assuming to speak for the majority of the Judiciary Committee of this House, and one of the leading and most influential members of it make such a statement as this which I read from the Globe:

Mr. Boutwell. I was proceeding to consider the distinction between an aristocracy and a republic. I say without hesitation that none of those States in which men are denied the elective franchise forthemselves and for all their posterity are republican. They are aristocracies moro or less offensive to republican institutions and republican government, and inasmuch as by the Constitution the United States has power, and it is made its duty to guaranty a republican form of government to each State, if upon observation we find, as I think we do find, in Delaawre, in Kentucky, in Maryland, in Ohio, and in Pennsylvania, thatthegovernmentsarenotrepublican, it becomes our duty to exercise the power vested in us by the Constitution and make those governments republican bylaw."

And the following from the same speech is equally indefensible—I had almost said ridiculous:

But, sir, consider the anomalous feature in our Government if the doctrinc be successfully maintained thatwecannotlegislateonthissubject. There are citizens in Kentucky and Maryland who. if the doctrine set forth by the opponents of this bill be a sound constitutional doctrine, are eligible to the office of President or Viee President of the United States, and yet who cannot vote for Representatives in Congress or even for a State, county, or town official. What is the qualification for the office of President? He must be a native citizen of the United States and thirty five years of age. Nothing more. These are the only qualifications for the office of President. By the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution we nave declared that all the black men in Maryland and other States shall bo citizens of the United States. Certain State governments have for the present denied these people the right to vote, and yet one of them may be elected President of the United States and anotherVice President. Is there such an anomaly in our Government? Are we prepared to admit its existence unless the Constitution imperatively requires it? The Constitution provides that any one twenty five years of age, who has been a citizen for seven years, may be elected a Kepresentativo upon this floor; and colored men, although denied the right of suffrage in their own States, may be elected to legislate for the whole country. Thus is the General Government putin an anomalous and inconsistent position."

As the speech progressed the following colloquy occurred:

"Mr. Welker. I desire to inquire whether there is anything in this bill that will prevent any of tho States from requiring of voters a property or educa-> lional qualification?

Mr. Boctwell. I do not suppose there is.

"Mr. Welker. Then the States may, under this hill, requiro suah a qualification?

"Mr. BotnrwELL. I suppose they may."

I never expected to hear such positions taken on this floor, even by the most obscure member; surely not from one of the great leaders of his party. Two Presidents of the United States have been elected from the State of Massachusetts; and while they each had all the constitutional qualifications for that high office, yet neither ot them may have possessed the property qualification required at the time of the election of each to have enabled either of them to vote for a member of the Legislature or even a constable in the State of Massachusetts. A pauper may be elected President.; Belisarius is said to have become a beggar. Misfortunes may reduce the wisest and best to be dependent on the community, and while in that dependent condition a man may be elected President; yet he is deprived of the right of suffrage by the constitutions of Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. It is not so in Kentucky. Intellect, and not wealth, is the qualification in the proud State I have the honor in part to represent. It is admitted by the gentleman from Massachusetts that he does not propose by his bill to prevent disfranchisement by the States to any extent if wealth is made the measure of the right.

But further elaboration seems to mo useless. A simple statement of the facts refutes all the sophistries of the argument of the gentleman. If the constitutions of the States he named as havinganti republican governments can besubverted and overthrown by Congress as" odious aristocracies," there were no republican State governments when the Constitution wasframed, and there are few, if any, now. New York, Connecticut, and all the western and northwestern States must be added to his list. Their Representatives must be expelled from these Halls, and Vermont alone will rule the continent. His idea of a guarantee is equally puerile. If these States ever had republican forms of government they have them now. The original thirteen States certainly had; and each agreed with the other that they had by the very act of framing the Constitution for the better protection of and more effectually to guaranty to each the preservation of their then existing republican governments; for the very idea of a guarantee presupposed the existence of the thing guarantied. So with the States afterward admitted. The act of admission of each into the Union by the Representatives of all, with the solemn declaration in each case that their State constitutions were republican in form and that they should severally be protected and guarantied in the preservation and perpetuation of them, is conclusive against the power of- Congress on any pretense whatever now to annul and subvert them.

This bill, so far from guarantying to every State in the Union arepublican form of government, actually, avowedly destroys and obliterates it. When Congress forces voters upon a State against its expressed will it assumes the reins of government then; the State is the mere serf of Congress, executing its orders, obeying its mandates. The government is congressional, not State, as much so as if Congress ordered it to fill all its State offices with men selected and named by Congress. Authority over the electors would give it equal authority over the officeholders in a State. There can be no State republican government if Congress dictates and enforces the government it sets up. Instead of protecting the State in the exercise of its freedom, this bill proposes to destroy that freedom; insteadofguarantyingthatfreedom to the States which is the very essence of republican government, it strikes it down. They have said in their State constitutions what they want guarantied. They are making no complaint and asking for no interference; neither foreign nor domestic enemies assail or threaten them; peace prevails. Yet we say wo will not only not guaranty them in that, but we will annul their constitutions, set aside their laws, and make them obey our orders whether they want to or not. I assert when we propose to do that we are plainly, palpably establishing a congressional despotism over the whole country. It is sheer folly for gentlemen to stand up here and think to hide their purposes from the country or the world by any such hollow pretenses as are set up in the argument of the gentleman from Massachusetts. The ostrich with his eyes closed and his head stuck in the sand is about as well concealed as the purposes of this bill are by all the high sounding declamation of the gentleman. A centralized, consolidated despotism will swallow up these great United States.

I now propose to show that the fourteenth amendment gives Congress no power over suffrage in the States, and that even the Republican part 7 never claimed that it did, but, on the contrary, distinctly avowed in the most solemn form that it did not, pledging themselves to the people of the country that they would so maintain if they were again intrusted with power and place. When General Grant was nominated, the convention which met at Chicago in May, 1868, after the whole meaning and effect of the fourteenth amendment was fully understood, laid before the country a platform of principles which it pledged itself to uphold and be governed by. Congress took a recess, and its Republican members were there en masse, doubtless its most active members, and the following resolution was unanimously adopted, being the second in the series: "Theguarantee by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South wasdemanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude, and of justice, and must be maintained, while the question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of the States themselves."

If that resolution was not intended to delude and deceive the people whose confidence and support they were seeking to obtain because of the principles they were pledging themselves to uphold and perpetuate, this bill cannot supported by any man who did not publicly disavow the published principles of his party. If the question of suffrage in all the loyal States rightfully and properly belongs to the people of the States themselves Congress cannot legally or properly interfere with it, and it would not only be bad faith but gross usurpation so to do.

But independent of that, it is evident, not only from the debates in both Houses of Congress at the time the fourteenth amendment was proposed, but from the language of the amendment itself when considered in reference to the peculiar and anomalous condition of the negro race, to which it more specifically, indeed almost exclusively relates, that the first section of the amendment, even if we leave out of view the second, which, making clear the meaning of the first, fully sustains the position which I in common with the Republican convention—and we agree but seldom—maintain, that the question of suffrage was not thereby interfered with, but was left where it properly belongs, with the States themselves.

Prior to that amendment negroes were not citizens of the United States. They possessed none of the rights or privileges and were entitled to none of the immunities of citizens. They could not sue in the courts of the United States. Passports to travel in foreign countries could not be granted to them because the United States could not protect any but her citizens. A negro born abroad could not be naturalized, that right being limited to free white persons. When the Constitution was adopted they were not regarded in any of the States as constituting any part of the people or citizens thereof, and the only two clauses in the Constitution pointing to the negro race treat them as persons whom it was legally and morally right to deal in as property and hold as slaves. The then civilized world acted on that idea in regard to them. Of course, no State could, after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, by any State legislation, make either a foreigner or other description of persons citizens of the United States, nor entitle them to the rights or privileges secured to citizens by that instrument; and while a State might by its own laws place a negro or any other person on a footing with its own citizens as to all rights, privileges, and immunities enjoyed by them within its own dominion, it could not make him a citizen of the United States so as to confer upon him any of the privileges or immunities of a citizen of any other State. It was because of these well settled principles that Massachusetts was unable to afford protection to negroes who were citizens of that State when they were seized and punished in South Carolina, which prohibited free negroes from other States from landing on her soil. It was because they were well established that Dred Scott could not test his right to freedom in the courts of the United States.

By section two, article three, of the Constitution the judicial power of theUnited States so far as it is controlled by the personal status of the litigant is limited to controversies" between a State and citizens of another State, between citizens of different States, between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants from different States, and between a State or the citizens thereof and foreign States, citizens, or subjects," so that it was up to the adoption of the fourteenth amendment impossible for a negro resident in a State that refused him the privileges of State citizenship to assert any rights in the courts of the United States; and it was equally impossible for him to obtain any of the benefits of section two, article four, of the Constitution, which provides that—

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens 111 the several States."

It was to give to the negro race, nine tenths of which had been held in slavery until the adoption of the thirteenth constitutional amendment, the benefit of the protection which citif zenship confers that the fourteenth amendment was adopted, if it be adopted, which, for the purposes of this argument only, I propose to admit. Under it negroes, as wellas Indians, Gipsies, Chinese, and all the Mongolian races born in the United States, men and women, young and old, can now sue and be sued in the courts of the United States.

They can travel under the protection of the Government in foreign countries; they can move from State to State, locate in any State, acquire, hold, and enjoy property under the protection of the laws of the State upon the same terms as white citizens going therefrom other States can; they are entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and those rights are not to be abridged by State legislation when such citizen of the United States comes within the local jurisdiction of the State. But as it must be conceded that being a citizen of the United States, whether by birth or naturalization, never gave any man the right against the will of the State to go there and exercise the right of suffrage, the refusal of the State to grant U cannot in any sense abridge his rights or privileges as a citizen of the United States. It is impossible for any privileges to be abridged that a man neverpossessed. The very idea conveyed by the term abridge is that existing rights, privileges, or immunities shall not be impaired, taken from, diminished or made less beneficial, but it conveys no idea of the acquisition of rights or of the requirement now assumed that new privileges shall be granted.

Whatever privilege he possesses by virtue of being such citizen when he goes within the local jurisdiction ot a State shall not be taken away, impaired, or abridged. But no new grant is either required or expected from the State. She shall not interfere with his light to sue in the courts of the United States, nor withhold from him the equal protection of her laws; to do so would abridge his privileges. The first section has that extent no more. States may allow persons to exercise the right of suffrage who are not citizens of the united States; most of the northwestern States have done so; some of them now do, or they may refuse to allow it to citizens of the United States, as Rhode Island now does, to those who are naturalized. A grant of the right of suffrage in a republic is an investment of the individual to whom it is granted with the highest rights of citizenship, yet it is by no means an element necessary to establish unqualified citizenship. All the native born white females in the United States, and all persons, male and female, under twenty one years of age, are as much citizens of the United States and of the States in which they reside, and are as fully entitled to the protection of all the laws, State and Federal, as those males to whom the right of suffrage is intrusted. The paupers in Massachusetts, and those who cannot read the Constitution in the English language nor write their names, all of whom are excluded from the right of suffrage in that State by its constitution, are citizens of the State as much as those who vote. If the gentleman and his friends had given the people of the southern States the same constitution that the people of Massachusetts in 1836 imposed upon themselves, ninety per cent, of the negroes there would be excluded from the exercise of the right of suffrage; and while they are fastening negro equality, social and political, upon that people, Massachusetts, in her code of laws passed in 1836, prohibited the marriage of any white person with a negro or mulatto, declared all such marriages null and void, and their children bastards, punishing by a fine of fifty pounds any person who should join them in marriage. I think Massachusetts was right; but with her high pretensions to justice she ought to apply the same rule to others that she does to herself.

Mr. Speaker, it seems like child s play to cite authority to sustain a proposition so plain as that the right of suffrage is by no means a necessary incidentof citizenship. It may not be amiss, however, to say that in the discussion of the civil rights bill, which makes all negroes born in the United States citizens of the United States, and gives them all the right that citizenship g n confer, as well as in the discussion of the rights given to them hy the fourteenth amendment, Senator Trumbull, chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, and all the Republican lawyers in both Houses whose opinions were worth anything, admitted that neither the act nor the amendment conferred, or were expected or intended to conferon them the right of suffrage. All agreed that each State regulated that matter as each might consider that extension or limitation of the right most conducive to the welfare of the State. It was in view of these well known facts and admissions that I asked the gentleman from Massachusetts, while making his speech, the following questions, which, with his answer, I read from the Globe:

I desire to ask if by the first section of the fourteenth amendment it was intended to prevent the States from determining who should and who should not vote, why, when it provides that 'no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,' it did not add, nor makes discriminations among the citizens of the State itself in the exercise ot the right ot suffrage?

"Mr. Bodtwell. There was the plainest reason intheworld. It was not necessary. The article provides, as it stands, that therecan be no discrimination by the States among the citizens of the United fetates, who are as well citizens of the several States and entitled equally to the privileges of citizens."

The answer not only does not meet, but carefully avoids the question. All may be equally entitled to the privileges of citizens without impairing the absolute right and power of the State to limit suffrage there as it pleases. The women and children, as I have stated, are all citizens of the State and of the United States. The paupers and those who cannot read or write in Massachusetts are all citizens, and their rights, privileges, and immunities cannot be constitutionally abridged; but that does not make them voters in the State. It never entered into the brain of any statesman till a majority of the Judiciary Committee of this Housa took it up by presenting this bill, that every State constitution, with the exception perhaps of Vermont, is overthrown and annulled by that amendment, and that every State is now carrying on the State government under a constitution which contains provisions inconsistent with and antagonistic to the Constitution of the United States, and are therefore now living in contempt of, if not in rebellion to its authority. If the words—or any others equivalent thereto—suggested in my question had been inserted, despotic and revolutionary as the exercise of such power would have been, being subversive of the freedom and rights of the States, indeed of their very existence as States, still it could have been understood that universal suffrage was to be enforced, the failure to insert some such idea is conclusive that it was only intended to invest this class of people with the protection which the Federal Constitution throws around its citizens, and such as the State constitutions grant to all their citizens, young and old, male and female, rich and poor, all of which can be done without any changes in the fundamental laws of the States; purposely leaving the question of suffrage as it stands in the several State constitutions, so that the people thereof may extend the right or not as they see fit. Congress doubtless desired that all the States should adopt universal suffrage, and so desiring, determined to so exercise the power it possesses of apportioning representation among them as to make it their interest to do so. It had been heretofore provided that population should regulate representation in Congress, with some modifications. Now it is provided that suffrage shall control; hence the second section of the amendment, which provides:

"Sec. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But ■when the right to vote at afiy election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or tile members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty ono years of age and citizens of the United States, or iu any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty one years of age in such State."

It is contended by the gentleman from Massachusetts that this is only a political punishment to be imposed on such States as refuse to obey the mandates of the first section till such time as Congress can enforce its provisions, which he asserts provides that the right to vote for certain officers cannot be denied or abridged. A more unfounded assumption cannot well be imagined. The right, to vote is not only not secured by the first section, as he assumes, it is not even alluded to; nor, as f have shown, is there any language in it which indicates that was so intended. Just the reverse; and as the right to regulate that question was by the first section left the States, the consequences which are to follow their refusal to make suffrage universal are determined in the second.

If the first section secured the right to vote at all, the second was the most absurd and abortive effort to secure that right to the parties entitled to it that can well be conceived. It is very hard to see how the disfranchised or unenfranchised persons are better protected, or their right to vote in any way forwarded, by a diminution of the representation of the States of their residence in the Congress of the United States. The conclusion of the gentleman on that subject is singularly lame and impotent. Thisamendment being part of the Constitution is, of course, subject to and governed by the same rules of construction as the original instrument, which is a grant of express powers, or of powers properly and necessarily inferable from the express grant. There is no bill of rights in the Federal Constitution, while nearly all the State constitutions contain them; the amendments to the Constitution being all limitations on the General Government and not applicable to the States. Why is this? Simply because the Federal Constitution could grant no rights; it only received powers, and is authorized to enforce restrictions which the States put upon themselves.

Construing the force, effect, and meaning of this amendment as I do, there is no difficulty in carrying it out by appropriate congressional legislation; but if the other view is attempted to be enforced and the existing constitutions and laws of the States are to be set aside by legislation here, as this bill proposes, it will be very difficult to find either an express grant or a properly implied one anywhere in that first sectiou.

As to the fourth section of the bill, I have only time to say that, even if there was no other objection to it, it is so cruel and inhuman in its penalties, and is kept open as a constant bid for perjury on the part of those who want the offices to which others have been elected— and their name is legion—for such a length of time, (ten years,) that it ought to be at once rejected. I would commend to the gentleman the careful and serious consideration of the twenty fourth article of the bill of rights of the Massachusetts constitution, which provides that—

"Laws made to punish for actions done before the existence of such laws, and which have not been declared crimes by preceding laws, are unjust, oppressive, and inconsistent with the fundamental principles of a free government."

Following up that fundamental idea, the Constitution prohibited Congress from passing bills of attainder or ex post facto laws; and lest the States in the exercise of their reserved powers might at any time so far depart from the established principles of republican liberty and law as to do so, the Constitution further provided that no State should pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts.

There is at least enough doubt about the construction of the third section of the fourteenth amendment, on which the fourth section of this bill is based, to make it not only extremely oppressive, but grossly unjust legislation. The provision to punish "any person who shall exercise the powers and duties of any office therein specified" who is disqualified by the third section of the amendment by imprisonment at hard labor for two years, without, in any manner defining what offices he must have held to impose the disability upon him or without giving him any information which will enable him to understand, for example, what is meant by being an executive or judicial officer of any State.

Are city, town, and county officers included? Does it apply to men who had been fully pardoned, and had been duly elected to State offices before the amendment was passed? These and many other questions will i arise, and men must not only run all risks of what the ultimate decision will be, but one court may decide one way, and another the reverse; men may be assured that their case is not covered by the law, and in the utmost good faith continue to hold office, and yet be convicted and sentenced to ignominious punishment for two years at hard labor, when they were not only wholly unconscious of beingguilty of any wrong, but believed they had a perfect right to the office. These prosecutions may be prosecuted by this law at any time within ten years from the commission of the offense. What is the offense? Is it the holding of the office or the disqualifying act? The evidence may be oral, and supported by statements purporting to have been made ten years before. Recollections of what was said ten years before, when party bitterness is aroused, and motives to commit perjury to secure place are held out, make it, as I said, a most oppressive and unjust law. If I can get an opportunity, and the bill is to be considered, I shall move to amend by inserting after the words "who shall exercise the powers and duties of any office therein specified" the following: "after having been declared ineligible to such office by the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction," and limit the time for such prosecution to two instead of ten years. But I will not discuss this section. It was not discussed by the gentleman from Massachusetts, and all the principles in it have been so fully and ably discussed and exposed by my colleague, [Mr. Knott,] whose argument has not been and cannot be answered, that I am willing to rest it there.

My time is nearly exhausted. I have endeavored to confine myself strictly to the law and the facts as I understand them. I have made no allusion to the repeated insinuations against the State of Kentucky. She needs no defense. She stands to day the peer of the proudest Commonwealth in this great Republic. When this or any other Congress shall strike down her State government and those of her sister States, as this bill and amendment proposes to do, it will be the darkest day this country ever saw. I have no response to make to the rallying cry of party necessity so warmly, I had almost said so fiercely, urged. The principles involved reach far beyond and rise high above party; they strike down Republican and Democrat alike, for they strike down the columns that support the temple of liberty itself Five years ago a proposition of this sort would have brought down denunciations loud and deep from men of all parties on the heads of the committee orthe member proposing such a bill; but revolutions progress, usurpation if successful encourages and develops further encroachments until all the original land marks of liberty are lost. A distinguished historian says—and we would do well to heed it and see that we do not verify it:

"We find in the history of all usurping governments time changes anomaly into system and injury into right. Examples beget custom, and custom ripens into law, and the doubtful precedents of one generation become the fundamental maxims of another.”

Mr. SHANKS. Mr. Speaker, my purpose iiyi rising at this time is to say that I will vote the bill and proposed amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts, and have offered ail amendment thereto by inserting the word "property" in the seventh line of the first section of the printed bill, and in the eleventh line of the amendment to prohibit the practice adopted by some of the States of requiring a property qualification for voters as well as for the purposes previously intended by the bill and amendment, that of prohibiting encroachments on the elective franchise on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. But, sir, I here wish to state further that I do not think the amendment to the Constitution necessary. In my opinion the bill is ample to reach the case.

I have long thought that it was not only in the power but in the duty of Congress to protect the right of the elective franchise to all the people against any attempt by State or local legislation or by force or fraud to curtail, embarrass, or defeat its full and equal enjoyment by all adult citizens. It would seem to be a remarkable termination of a great and good purpose upon the part of our ancestors, as well as all other founders of free government and of the principles of free government itself that they should declare the equal rights of all men as a cardinal doctrine, and then abandon it in the practical workings of the institutions they thus formed to secure those equal rights? If, indeed, free government exists only in theory, and has no practical virtues, we are mistaken, and the sooner the masses of mankind are rid of the delusion, and the more readily they return to the pathway of subjection, oppression, and humility, before their more assumptive followers, thebetterforthem. and the more readily and heartily they will be forgiven for believing the heresy that they had valuable natural rights given of God and equal to those of other men. I have implicit confidence in the existence, purity, and majesty of a supreme Ruler of the universe, and 1 have not lost confidence in mankind. The large majority of the people of all countries, if untrammeled and left to their own judgment, are honest, generous, and even noble in their conceptions and distribution of justice and right, and always magnanimous toward their fellows. It is generally in the minority, but who are the more assumptive, arrogant, ambitious, and not unfrequently vicious portion of society that evil is engendered, that, like leaven, it affects the entire society and often impresses belief diametrically opposite to the real truth. The ambition and vigilance of such often make them rulers among men, and thus republics and free institutions are wasted by falling into bad hands, being thus used for sinister purposes weaken their hold upon the confidence of the masses and are easily wrenched from them, they caring little for the theory of political blessings that bring to them no real protection. a No man is safe in his person or property in a community where he has no voice in the protection of either. The subjugation of his rights and liberties, the seizure and waste of his property, the degradation of his character, and the insecurity of his life are only questions of time that are not often long deferred. Our own much injured country furnishes examples enough of the proof of this to both awaken and astonish the civilized world, and to demand the most certain and radical remedy against their recurrence, which can only be secured to society by placing in the hands of all men both the right of self defense and of the ballot, by which the Government becomes sacred in the hands of the people, because it is the reflected will of all the people. It is only then, it may be truthfully said, that the Government is of the people, for the people, and by the people. When our forefathers declared to oppressed and astonished mankind the day of a brighter civilization in the birth of the immortal declaration of the equal rights of men they believed that there was a living reality in the declaration. When in support of that declaration and its legitimate consequences they, at great loss of property and life, both of which they deliberately staked on the eventful issue hadfounded a Government formed in support of these views, they were still confirmed in the justness of their cause. When, years afterward, in the judgment of the people it became necessary, in support of the cause they had espoused through the Government they had founded to secure a more perfect union of the States, they, after due deliberation and debate, both in the national Congress and in the Legislatures of the several States, establishing a Constitution for the United States, adorning it with this synopsis of its contents and declaration of its purposes;

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for tile common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the bl essings of liberty to ouiselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

This they understood to be a declaration of universal right, and is sufficient for the purpose, for it teaches the genius of the Government and the character and purpose of its founders and protectors. If there were no other teachings in its articles or sections touching the equal rights of the people this preamble is enough and to spare. But if it be said that the blacks were not included because they were slaves I answer, sir, that many of the blacks then were voters, and aided in support of the men who taught these doctrines and established this Constitution, while many white men were denied the ballot because they were poor.

It is poverty more than complexion that dictates the fate of mankind. There has not been ail hour since the commencement of the barbarism of slavery in America that money would not purchase the liberty of the slave, nor has there been a time that a white man could vote in some States unless he paid a tax, while in some States the black man could vote if he had property and in others without that qualification, and iu others still he could not vote at all, while in many others he is not permitted to vote though more than half his blood be white. Again, I say, it is property more than complexion that dictates the fate of mankind, and republics can only stand when the ballotbox is secured to the poor as well as the rich, when every one is interested in supporting the Government because the Government secures his rights. Havethe opponents ofthis measure learned nothing by the past? Has that revolution conceived and executed by those who held an undue and unequal balance of power in the management of the Government, with all the great sacrifices of that struggle, taught them nothing? Have they walked blindly through these past years of severe schooling? Is the history of the past dead to them? Has the strength of the people of this nation in field and forum, in legislative hall and at the ballotbox been only a pastime and folly to them, or have they deliberately, with true Mussulman zeal, set their souls against progress and determined to destroy civilization in the house of its friends and make this Republic a mockery and by wordamongthe nations oftheearth, instead of a political high school for the civilized world? Have our fathers established a Republic with a Constitution so fragile as to be controlled by mere traditions and governed by prejudice in violation of its plain teachings? Will the Constitution, that is the written will of all the people, and that declares the rights of the citizen, yield before the anti-republican prejudice of a portion of the people against other citizens, only because they are all or partly of different blood; and would you call this a stable and a free Government? Has the Government no power to secure to all the people their rights, and have the people no power to compel the Government to this duty?

And are the opponents of this measure opposed to trusting the people with the destinies of their own Government, lest they should destroy it or take to themselves the right to manage it for just purposes? And do you call this liberty? Are the few to control the many; the people s servants to govern the nation, while they stand powerless to secure their own rights through the means established for the general good at the hands of their servants? The better sense of honest men revolts at such duplicity and double dealing, and demands that equal and exact justice be done to all men before the law; that taxation and representation shall go hand in hand, and that the right to participate in the management of the Government whose laws we must obey shall be forfeited only for crimes whereof the parties have been duly convicted. I believe now, as I have in the past, that Congress had thepower, and it was its duty, to abolish slavery throughout the nation at any and every hour of its sessions from its first meeting under the Constitution to that time at which slavery was abolished through other means.

It was with deep mortification and sorrow that I saw Congress stand idly by, even appalled before slavery s high crimes and doubting its power to prevent them, until the necessity was forced upon the nation to declare through its Exective that liberty of the people as a necessary war measure which the legislative power of the Government, vested by the people in a Congress, should have done in time of peace as a light to mankind and a duty to God, and, too, a duty which they could not pass or omit without incurring the responsibility of crime. The sequel has shown how little I was mistaken. I believe that the power and duty of Congress to protect the equal rights of all the citizens of the nation has been perfect since the adoption of the Constitution to this hour. The fact that this is a national legislative body secures that power and carries with it the duty. A war power, then, is power above the law making. A nation that, cannot protect its citizens against encroachments of others of its citizens is defective or already in revolution. The nation that will not is ail aristocracy and needs correction. If the defect is in the organic law, it should be amended by the people; but if it is only in the practice of the Government, as I believe it is in this case, either by its commissions or its omissions, it may and should be corrected by its own voluntary butpromptandefficientaction. Weshould do that work here now, and do it well.

I am not one of those who labor among the musty records of aristocratic and monarchical Governments for rules and precedents to carry on this free Republic. I do not first tie toy feet and then attempt to walk. I do not give the Government and all its blessings to the few and then ask them generously to yield at their pleasure to consider propositions in favor of the people. All that has had its time; it is in the dead past. It is of the things that were. However, its relics still crop out, and become manifest in the haughtier style of the would be oppressor, the remnant of corrupt power, who, self styled and conceited, full of vice and crime, commits murder as a satisfaction to appease his hatred to progress, justice, and law. But this the people and the age alike condemn. They must soon pass away: the fiat has gone forth, and civilization is advancing, justice is triumphant, and the equal rights of men must follow. Those who because they are more idle and vile than their neighbors assume to control, rule, rob, own, or sell them and their families at pleasure for gain have always found in the Constitution, as in the holy writings, proof in support of their great wrongs to mankind; and now, even in the light of the total abolition of that statutized twin relic of barbarism, human slavery, and in the brighter light of an advanced Christian civilization, do not seem to learn the apparent truth that society is moving forward; that mankind has aroused from the scourge of ignorance; that men have learned to comprehend the teaching that has ruled them, and that they have determined to be free. The people will not longer ignore the fact that this is their own Government, founded to secure their own rights.

The public servant who in this age of political advancement, in this free and enlightened country, cannot comprehend how the people can iu safety to the public welfare exercise all their just and equal rights in the Government is not the proper person to be trusted by them with its destinies. The public servant who has not firmness enough to do right at all times, regardless of private interest and public prejudice, is an unsafe sentinel. He who will not do right though he could is a willing instrument for evil, not entitled to public or private confidence. He who thinks or believes that this nation can prosper while its legislators are unjust to the people is a fool. He who assumes for himself a superiority over his fellows is worse than either—a knave. It has long been and is yet the practice in Congress to refer with pride to the expansive provisions and conceptions of the Constitution, and to dwell with pride upon the noble generosity of its makers in support of a power in Congress to enact all laws; many to admire the social, pecuniary, commercial, agricultural, scientific, or mechanical interests of the nation and people. Yet our records present the strange fact that whenever that great subject, that absolute necessity to the proper or full enjoyment of social, pecuniary, commercial, mechanical, agricultural, or scientific interests, namely, human liberty, is under consideration, the Constitution is eagerly evoked by every political liliput to prove the virtues of that miserable, antiquated doctrine of inferior races, castes, and privileged classes.