Mr. FESSENDEN. Very well. How is it a renunciation of the power? We may pass a bill today, the Senator s bill, if he chooses, on the back of it and the strength of it, The power exists in the constitution, the Senator argues, to legislate on the subject. He says that under the guarantee clause and the clause which gives to Congress the power to carry into effect the powers granted and existing in the Constitution, we may legislate today and pass laws by which the suffragewill be given universally. That I understand is his idea. By presenting this proposition to the States, do we renounce that power? Can we renounce that power? How? Will the Senator tell me? In what way can Congress renounce a power that is given them by the constitution? They may omit to exercise it; but there can be norenunciation. If it exists in the constitution it stays there until changed; and not all the powers of all the Congresses that have existed since the constitution was adopted can take away one jot or one mm: of it, owever much they may nedect their duty. It is sayin what? It is speaking the truth. Pass your law basing representation upon voters alone, and the power is there, if it exists at all, to do as any State pleases with regard to this question of representation. It may make the voters few or many. This resolution simply says, you have the power perhaps, but if you have it, and if you exerciseit in the way that we fear you may, or thatit is gassibleyou may, these consequences follow. e put it in plain terms, leaving it to each State to do what it pleases. Sir, I would like betterindeed I drew a resolution to that effect and should like to have it passedto append to this very resolution another resolution amending the constitution and giving power to Congress to legislate upon the subject in full. The Senator would not agree with me. because he says that power exists now. Let us examine that question for a moment. I do not know but that the power A present renunciation of ested by the" l J Shall we not rather make of, this poulation a useful population? Shall we does exist; my inclinations are all that way. I wish the power did exist, if it does not. But, sir, how did our ancestors, the fathers who made the constitution, look upon this question of guarantee? Everybody will seethe Sena. tor has certainly often contended and will not denythat a constitution or a form of government which recognizes slavery is not a RFG, according to his definition, the merican definition; and yet in the ver instrument in which the fathers provided that the U.S. should guaranty to every State a RFG they recognized the existenceof slavery unmis takably, and provided for it in the very clause that we have been considerin with reference to representation. the obligation to guaranty a RFG extended thus far, giving congress the right to interfere in Virginia to examine her constitution? I ask the question that he may answer it, because after alhe will admit, as a lawyer, as we all must, that in construing a constitution and construing a statute and construin any provision, we look at contemporaneous history in the 1st place, and we look more particularly when endeavoring to find out what the sense of an instrument is, at all its clauses, in order to get the meaning of all, for one explains the other. It would seem to me, then, that the Senator went a little too forwith his argument as to the guarantee clause. What is understood by a guarantee? In the bill that he has presented, and upon which I desire to say a word by and by, he speaks of a guarantee as we speak of it at common law in the ordinary legal sense of the term. Is that all it means in the constitution? I may guaranty to the honorable Senfrom Massachusetts the possession of his house, and I mAy propose to execute my guarantee, but he may say to me, “Sir you need not trouble yourself about that; Irclease you; I do not wish to be put in possession of my house.” I do not know of any right I have to say, ” You shall be put in possession ofyour house, and I will put you into it whether or no.” I think the common law acceptotion of the term “ guarantee, ” Or the exposition of it, would hardly “PPY. “Guarantee, ” as used i. n the constitution, means something more. It means that every State shall have a RFG. It is a power granted for the benefit, not only of the particular State in question, whichever it may be, but of all the States. Whether you call it a compact or what not, it is a provision to secure by the power of the U.S. a RFG to every State that shall be a memberof the Union. There is no doubt about that. But does it go further, and say that the U.S shall have power to examine eve statute passed by every State which has a RFG to begin with, an see whether it conforms to it, and ifiit does not, to order its mar, shal and its courts to interfere and set it right, and if the court is resisted, to turn out the Military and raise an army in order to guaranty to every State a RFG, and see thatits lhws are all in accordance with it? Sir, it goes not beyond matters very substantial; it hardly goes into details like these. If that is the meaning of the uarantce, and that is the way it is to be carried out, I take it the people of the U.S. may have enough on their hands. What army would answer the purpose? What extent of power would be necessary if this State and that State, which perhaps may have a provision that is in its nature somewhat wanting in republican essence, is to bebroughtby force of the U.S. through all its legislation and in all its legislation into exact accordance with the ideas of the honor able Senfrom Massachusetts, or my ideas, or anybodys ideas? I take it that the term “guarantee” as used in the constitution did not intend to go quite as far as this; at least itso strikes me. I wish I could believe with the Senator on this point; but when he argues that under this provision of the constitution it Did they t eu consider that l l it be repealed what becomes of the is the duty of Congress to examine the legislation of all the States, and see that every man votes who ought to vote, and nothing is wrong, and that his idea, or our idea, for it is the correctidea, of a republican Government is carried out in all its details, I think he goes considera bly further than those who made the Constitution ever intended to go. I think the President has the idea that if any State should undertake to establish a different form of Government if it should choose to have a monarchy, or the controlling portion of the people should choose to have an oligarchy, it then 18001119t8he duty of Congress to interfere; if there is any out rageous violation of the principles which lie at the foundation of our Government, then it is their duty to interfere; but I hardly think that it goes so far as to give Congress the power to legislate upon every subject upon which it might think the States should happen to be wrong.