Mr. WADE. I do not know whether this was so or not; but I suppose there never was a constitution that was framed for our approval that was not supposed by Congress, when they acted upon it, to be in conformity with the Constitution of the U.S and with their understanding of the DeclarIndep. I do not believe any man has ever voted for the adoption of a constitution for a State when he believed that it conflicted with the principles of those great fundamental instruments. }". did, and I do not think anybody ever did. I do not think those words, if they were inserted for the 1st time in this enabling act, meant any more than the act would have meant if they had not been inserted. They were a caution to us not to violate this instrument, and to legislate as all our predecessors had heretofore legislated upon this subject. I do not deny that I should like the constitutions of Nebraska and Colorado better if they contained no such exclusion as the Senator speaks of; but nevertheless, when he talks of their not being in conformity to the Constitution of the U.S., because they are not republican in form, I must say that, if that be so, I do not know of any State constitution that is republican. Is it any more antirepublican to exclude the colored people than it is to exclude all the female portion of your population? When you come to make exclusion a test, you cannot get a republican constitution anywhere. Has not a female this inalienable right that you talk about, and is it not tyranny and antirepublican, and everythin that is bad and abominable, to deny the suffrage to all females? How do you exclude 1/2 of your population without a thought to the contrary, and then insist that such a constitution will be made all right and republican by letting in a few colored voters? Your test will not bear scrutiny; such a test of republicanism will not answer. I suppose that the constitution here proposed is, according to the ideas of American states men, republican in form, and I believe so because it has the sanction of all those who have gone before us; because no one hereto fore has ever questioned the republicanism of a constitution like this. I. wish now to say a word about the insinuations which have been made by the Senfrom Massachusetts against my position, as though I had changed it in some way. Sir, it would be exceedingly strange if a man, after having been as long in the councils of the nation, as I have been, after having gone through such a terrible warfare for I have seen nothing else since I have been in Congress for 16 years past after having battled for equal rights to the utmost of my capacity during the whole period, should all at once, without any motive in God’s earth, change round and desert all those principles. That is the insinuation. Let it go for what it is worth. Sir, I have some little confidence in the people of Nebraska and Colorado; the Senator has none. He says that I spoke of the lenity which ought to be extended to these ol. I said no such thing. Lenity is not the word. They ask for no lenity. They only ask to be permitted to do that which you told them they might do. You said to them that if they would form a constitution as other States had done, and come here and present it, they should be admitted just as the other States had been. That is all they ask of you. They ask not a particle of lenity. I would not extend any lenity to anybody where a principle was at stake. They barely ask you to live up to the agreement you made. You say, however, that they did not perform it on their part, and thus you undertake to escape it. How was that? You fixed a certain , when they should meet and perform their part of the agreement. They did not meet on that day, but. met on another day, and did substantially what you asked of them. That was not a difference which was any departure in substance from your enabling act. It was the mere ghost of a form which they violated. It was inconvenient for them to effect what was desired on the very day named. It was not named as a condition, on failure to comply with which their action should be void; but it was merely a direction by Congress that the thing should be done on or about such a time, the particular day not being important. It was a bare direction; not a condition precedent. Now, you undertake to give the narrow construction that it failed altogether, because action was not had on the particular day named. I doubt whether ever a constitution was formed on the very day named by Congress. But these technicalities, these mere ghosts that you interpose between these people and the rights you have awarded to others, it seems to me, are not statesmanlike. If you were defending a man on an indictment for murder such a shadow would hardly avail him; and yet as a statesman you object to the formation of a State constitution that is good in all other respects, because it was not made on the very day that Congress said the people might make it. I do not think that is good logic or good law. Now, Mr. President, why is it that I stand here the advocate for the admission of this State into the Union when I have, as the Senator says, been generally the advocate of equal rights, and have insisted very much on justice? I will tell the Senator that it is be cause, when I consider the condition in which the country is, and when I look to the terrible conflict that lies right ahead of us, I feel disposed to arm myself, and be equipped with all the forces that are legitimately within my power. The Senfrom Wisconsin said yesterday that he once voted for the admission of this State, because he thought we wanted to be reenforced by the principles that these men knocking at your doors are actuated by, as helpmates to carry out the great doctrines that we are endeavoring to establish. Sir, it was a good idea. Now he says, however, that the clouds have passed by and all is fair weather, and there will. in the future no necessity for any reenforcements.