Mr. JULIAN. Mr. Speaker, whatever doubts may arise as to the authority of congress to regulate the right of suffrage in the districts lately in revolt, none can exist as to such authority within the DistCol. By the express words of the constitution, congress here has “ exclusive power of legislation; and that power, of course, extends to all the legitimate subjects of legislation, of which the allot is unquestionably one. Shall it be conferred irrespective of color, or granted only to white men 1 Shall Congress recognize the equal rights of all men in the metropohs of the nation and the territory under its exclusive control, ormust our national policy still be inspired by that contempt for the negro which caused slavery, and finally gave birth to the horrid war from which we have just emerged? Shall the nation, through its chosen servants, stand by the principle of taxation and representation for which our fathers fought in the beginning, or retinaetits ilty compact with aristocracy and caste? T iis is the question various] stated, which confronts us in the bill before the House. It must now be dealt with upon its merits. To attempt to postpone or evade it is to trifle with the dangers and duties of the hour, and forget all the tcirible lessons of the ast. Mr. Speaker, I emand the ballot for the colored men of this District on the broad ground of absolute right. I reiidiate the political philosophy which treats t ie right of sn age as merel conventional. The right of a man to a voice in the Government which deals with his liberty, his property, and his life is as natural, as inborn as anyone of those enumerated by our fathers. It is said, I know, that natural rights are only those universal ones which exist in a state of nature, in which every man takes his defense and protection into his own hands; but I answer that there is no such state of nature, save in the dreams of speculative writers. fhe natural state of man is a state of society, which demands law, government, as the condition of its life. By the right of suffrage 1 mean the right to a share in the governing power; and while the peculiar manner and circumstances of its exercise may fairly be regarded as conventional, the right is natural. If not, then there are no natural rights, since none could be enjoyed except by the favor or grace of the Government, which must decide for itself who shall be permitted to share in its exercise. You may, ifyou choose, call the right of suffrage a natural social right; but whatever adjectives you employ in your definition, the right, I in sist, is natural. Most certainly it is so in its primay sense. My friendfrom Iowa [Mr. “i ii. sorvrlsubstantially agrccs with me, for he speaks of suffrage, not as a privilege, but as a right, equally sacred with those acknowledged to be natural, and which Government cannot take away. Sir, without the ballot no man is really free, because if he enjoys freedom it is by the permission of those who govern, and not in Virtue of his own recognize manhood. We talk about the natural right of all men to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of ha piness; but if one race of men can rightfull disfranchiso an other, and govern them at Wlll, what becomes of their natural rights? The moment you admit such a principlo the very idea of democracy is renounced, and absolutism must own on as its disciple. The fact that society, throu Government as its agent, regulates the right, and withholds it in certain instances, as in the case of infants and idiots and makes the withdrawal of it a punishment for crime in others, does not at all contravene the ground I assume. Society, for its own protection, takes away all natural rights, or rather, it declares them forfeited on certain prescribed conditions. Chris tianity and civilization place their brand upon slavery as a violation of the natural rights of men. But that system of personal servitude from which we have finally been delivered is only one type of slavery. Serfdom is another. That unnatural ownership of labor by capital which grinds the toiling millions of the Old World, and renders life itself a curse, is not less at war with natural rights than negro slavery. The degrees of slavery may vary but the real test of freedom is the right to a s are in the governing power. Judge Humphre, speaking of the freedmcn, says "there is really no difference, in my opinion, whether we hold them as absolute slaves or obtain their labor by some other method.” The old sluveliolders understand this perfectl. An intelligent human bein, absolutely subject to the Government iin or which he lives, answerable to it in his person and property for disobedience, and yet denied any political rights whatever, is a slave. He may not wear the collar of any single owner, but he will be what Carl Schurz aptl calls “the slave of socicty, ” which is often a ess merciful tyrant! He will owe to the more race of the Government the right to marry and rear a family; the right to sue for any, grievance; the right to own a home in the wide world; the right to the means of acquiring knowledge; the right of free locomotion and to pursue his own happiness; the right to a fair days wages fora fair days work; the right to life itself, save on conditions to be fixed with out. his consent, and which may render him an alien and an outcast among men. So abject and humiliating is such a condition, and so perfectly does the world understand the sacredness of the rights of the citizen, thatin all free Governments his disfranchisement is appropriatcly made a part of the punishment for hi crimes. Sir, repeat it, there is no freedom, no security against wrong and outrage. save in the ballot; apd Governor Brownlow is therefore thoroughly right in principle, in contending that the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery and win g Congress the power, by appropriate legisation. to enforcet is abolition authorizes us to secure the ballot to all men in the revolted districts, irrespective of color. it is not slavery in form, but in fact, and under whatever name, that the people of the U.S. intend to have aboedforever. If I am right in this view, color has nothing whatever to do with the question of suffrage, as the Gentfrom Iowa [Mr. KAssoN will see. The no to should not be disfranchised because he is Tilack, nor the white man allowed to vote because he is white. Both should have the ballot because they are men and citizens, and require it for their protection. Are you willing to rest your right to the ballot on the purely contingent fact of your color? Your manhood tells you instantly that that is not the foundation. hon area man, endowed with all the rights of a man, and therefore on demand a voice in the Government; but when you say this you assert the equal rights of the negro. Neither color, nor race, nor a certain amount of property, nor any other mere accident of humanity, can justify one portion of the people in stripping another portion of their cqua rights before the law, the common master over all. Government, in fact, in its proper, American sense, is simpl the agent and representative of the governc, in taking care of eir interest and gumdin their rights. It is not the concern of the few, nor of the many, but of all. The negro, doubtless, would have been born white ifhc could have been consulted; and to take from him his inherent rights as a man because of his complexion is a political absurdity as monstrous as its injustice is mean and revolting. When you do it, you aim a deadly stab at the vital principle of all dem ocracy and if you may disfranchise the negro today on account of his race, or color, you may disfranchise the Irishman tomorrow, and the German the next day; and then, perhaps, you will be prepared to strike down the laboring man, the “mudsill, ” adopting the Virginia philosophy, that “filthy o cratives” and “ greasy mechanics” are unlit or political power. No absurdity or wickedness can be too great for a people who could thus deliberately sin against the great primal truths of democracy; and the logical consequence of the 1st false stc, ofany departure whatever from the rule which 1 makes manhood alone the test of right. must be to continually narrow the basis o popular power till the end shall be a remorseless aristocracy or an absolute despotism. Mr. Speakcr, this view of suffrage as a natural rit greatly simplifies the whole subject. The so e question is, as already stated, whether our democratic theory of Government shall be maintained in practically recognizing the in herent rights of all men as the source and basis of political power? To ask this question, in the U.S., is to answer it and public policy. also, answers the nestion in the interest of the broadest radica ism. Dutynnd advantage will be found hand in hand in any fairly tested experiment of equal suffrage. According to the census returns of 1860, the colored population of this District was then over 14,000. It is now estimated at about 20,000. The value of real and personal proierty owned by them is at. least $1, 225,000. They own 21 churches, supported at a cost of over $220,000 perannum. The whole number of their communicants is 4.300, with an average attendance of 9,000, distributed among their own religious communities, and among the Catholic and Epis copal churches of their white fellow citizens. They have 20 Sabbath schools, with from 3 to 4000 scholars, and 33 da schools, attended by over 4000 scholars in the month of last November. 4000 of the colored people can read and write. They subscribe for 1,250 copies of the National Republican, and about 3,000 copics of the Daily and Sunday Chronicle. There are more than 30 benevolent, literar, and civic organizations among them, by which their needy, superannuated, and infirm are cared for to a large extent, the city government having none or ver few colored paupers to on port. They furnished 3 full regiments for the national service, numbering in all 8, 549, and from 60 to 70%. of the drafts in the district were comylilczed of drafted colored soldiers or substitutes. 1, sir, is the character and condition of a class in this oommmnnity 90%. Of whom were slaves at the beginning of the war, or their immediate descendants, many of them having purchased their own freedom and that of their families, and are besides property holders to a considerable extent. ir, ical this a good record, if not a proud one. These people are here, and they will remain here, either as the friends or the enemies of the Government. If we shall give them their rights a stake in society, an equal chance with the white man to fight the battle of life instead of becoming an element of weakness and a source of danger they will be found our allies and friends, and thus lend unity and strength to the Government. If we shall continue to disfranchise and degrade them, we shall make them aliens, domestic foes in our midst, a or etual menace of danger and discord, fromw ic we shall sulferquiteas much as the party thus wronged by our cruel folly. As a matter of mere policy, therefore. wholly aside from the question of right, I would give the ballot to every colored man of competent age in the District; and had I the power 1 would secure to him a home on the soil he has so long watered by his tears. I proposed this policy for the revolted States in a measure I had the honor to report to this House 2 years ago, providing or homesteads on the forfeited and confiscated lands ofrebels; and had it prevailed in the Senate, as it did in this body, it would have wrought out the only true reconstruction of government and society in the South. The great want of ever poor man is a home, along with the ballot With which to defend it. Russia, in giving freedom toher millions of serfs, secured to each one of them a homestead. Our policy should be the same. In the history of the world the ballot has generally followed the granting of homesteads to the poor; but the poor now should have the ballot as the surest means of attaining the homestead. Sir, there is but one remed for the appallin picture recently preseate byTJohn Bright, one million families in the nited Kingdom who are unrepresented in Parliament, and whose utter hel essness, poverty, and degradation appeal in vain to the English aristocracy. That rem edy, as righteousl due these voiceless millions as the sun ight, is the ballot. That would “ bend the powers of statesmanship to the high and holy es of humanity and justice, ” and at last make sure to the lowliest the blessed sanc tuary of a home upon the soil, which is among the natural rights to secure which “GOVERNments are instituted among men.” In our own more favored country the ballot and the homestead may go together, and should be conferred at once. 1n the 5 great landed States of the South there yet remain about filty imfillion acres of public land unsold, all of which not prevente by law, will be open to rebel speculators. This should be set apart at once for actual homestead! in limited quantities, and a hill providing for this is now before the comPubLands. Eve landless freedman in the country, should this measure prevail, will have at least a chance to become a freeholder, and thus to unite his destiny to the Government as its friend. This, or some kindred measure, is rendered absolutel necessary by the unfortunate failure of the policy of confiscation and by what seems to me the criminal action of the Government in restorin to fla gitious rebels, through pardons and otherwise, the vast and valuable lands which had vested in the nation through their treason, and are so greatly needed and have been so justly earned by the freedmen. Sir, no other policy than that of justice and equal rights can be trusted in dealing with these longsuffering people. In stead of driving them to thriftlessness and vaga bondism, I would bind them to the Government through its parental care for theirwelfare. Let us ive them the ballot; and then, should a public grievance come, they will bear it cheer fully, as selfimposed. The will hide their time, in the hope that at a uture election the remedy will be found. “I can conceive no greater social evil, ” says Governor Parsons, of Alabama, “than a clamof humanity in our" 1866. 257 midst so excluded from the social pale as to become a stagnant, seething, miasmatic, moral cesspool in the community. Human nature cannot improve without the moral incentive of hope in a human future.” The policy of education, of moral development, can alone secure the just rights and the highest good of all races; and if the rulers of other countries were wise, they would aply this truth in dealing with their discontente and dangcrous populution. “Each class in England, ” says the westminster Review, “as it has, by the natural progress of civilization, in time a vanced to a consciousness of its own condition, and a comsarison between itself and others, has in turn emanded to be admitted to a share in the Government. Each in turn has been admitted, and the country has grown more and more powerful, and the population more contented, as the basis of freedom has one down lower and spread out wider.” Sir, trust this lesson of English history, slowly evolved, and now held up to us by English radicals, will not be slighted in dealing with the question of negro enfranchisenient in our own country. Mr. Speaker, if it shall be objected that the negroes of this District are not fit to vote; that they are too ignorant and degraded to be in trusted with power, I have several replies to make. In the 1st place, the negroes of this District are not all ignorant, as I have already shown by facts. Many of them are educated and quite intelligent. The larger class who are not so will not suffer by a comparison with the very large class of their ignorant white neigh bors. The “rounders” and rufiians who in stigate mobs against harmless and peaceable colored people, and then publish their deeds as a negro insurrection, MNIJWHO have probably been on the side of the rebels, in sympathy or in fact, during the whole of the war, are not the most fit men in the world for the ballot. They vote, and there is no proposition from any uarter to disfranchise them. The policy of assachusetts, referred to yesterday by the Gentfrom Iowa, Mr. KassoN] would leave them untouched. commend this fact to all the fairminded opponents of negro suffrage. In the next place, fitness is a relative term. Nobody is perfectly fit to vote, because nobody is perfectly informed as to all the subjects of our legislation and policy. Of the millions in our land who regularly go to the polls and pass upon the gravest questions, how many could stand even a tolerable examination on political econom, or constitutional law, or political eth ics? how many men of good sense and fair in telligence could give a welldefined reason even for some of their most decided opinions? The truth is, all men are more or less unfit to vote, as all men are more or less unfit to discharge all their duties, civil, social, religious, or what not. The political opinions add actions of the generality of men, who in afree country govern, are not guided by logic, or any exact knowledge, but by habit and tradition, by their social relations, and by their natural trust in those whom they think wiser than themselves. On this subject the highest authority of which I have any nowledge is John Stuart Mill. He says: “It is not necessary that themany should. inthemselves. betperfectlywise; it is sulficientil the bedul sensibleo the value of superior wisdom. this so fiqcuieesnttioinf sthteuyrnbeuapwonarethat themajority of political considerations of which they and all other personsnot trainedfor the purposemust pecossarlly hevery imperfect Judges, and that their Judgment must. in general. be exercised upon the ohpracters and talentsof the persons whom they appoint to decidethosequestionsfor them. rather than upon thei (uestions themselves. This implies no gijeaterWis mu m the peoplethan the very ordinary WIStIQHlof knowing what things they are and are not sufficientiudges of. If the bulk of any people possessa fair share of thiswisdom, the argumentfor Universal sufirage, so far as respects that people is irre sistible.” Sir, by this standard I am willing to have the colored people of this District tried; and I demand the same trial for the white men who are loudest in their protest against negro bal lots.