Mr. JOHNSON. No, I beg the Senators ardou. Although by no means as multifarious in my reading as the honorable member, I may say that all speeches of that description I have perhaps rea as often as he has. It was taxation without representation against which he spoke. Did he mean that Massachusetts and RhdIsland were not republican governments? If he did not. mean to exclude them from the category of republican governments, then in the opinion of ames Otis Maryland is yet a republican government, and so is every State in the Union a republican government. Here, as was the case with my honor able friendfrom Iowa he is confounding the right of suffrage with the right of being represented. Not only is the bugle voice of James Otis appealed to, but the action of the fathers, the sense and spirit of the constitution, all, in the judgment of the honorable member, demonstrate that this right of suffrage should exist. A republican government, says the honorable member, is an American idea. Cicero and Aristotle and Socrates and all the worthies whcf have preceded us in times past knew nothing upon the subject. They were, in the sense ot the term in merican constitutional jurisprudence, behind the age. The 1st time the true thing was discovered, that which animates the heart and nerves the arm of all who may be within the reach of such a government, a republican oernment, was here within the limits of the U.S. Suppose I concede it; and I have not time to question it with the honorable member. What was the idea here? Did our fathers consider that anyone of the 13 States who finally came under the provisions of that constitution and have ever since constituted a part of the nation were not living under RFGs? The honorable member will pardon me for saying that to suppose it is to isparage the memory of those great and good men. There was riot a State in the Union when the constitution was adopted that was republican, if the honorable members definition of a republican government is the one now to be relied upon. A property qualification was remired in all at that time. (he roes were notal owed to vote, although free, in most of the States. In the southern States the mass of the negroes were slaves, and of course were not entitled to vote. If the absence of the universal right of suffrage proves that the government is not republican, then there was not a republican government within the limits of the U.S. when the constitution was adopted; and yet the very object of the clause to guaranty a republican government and the honorable members citations prove itwas to prevent the existing governments; from being changed by revolution. It was to preserve the existing governments; and yet the honorable member would have the Senate and the country believe that. in the judgment of the men who framed the constitution there was not a RFG in existence. Here is what Madison says in the 43rd number of the Federalist. After reciting the clauseI have not time, nor is it necessary to read more than a sentence or 2 from ithe says: “To the 2ndquestion it may be answered. thdt if the General Government should interpose by virtua of this constitutional authority, it will be of course bound to pursuc the authority. But the authority extends no urther than to a guarantee of a RFG” and what does that suppose? He tells us: “which supposes a preexisting government of the form whichis to be guarantied. As long, therefore. as the extsting republican forms arecontinued by the tSiLantgs they are guarantied by the Federal ConstituSo that the honorable member and the senate will see that the ver object of the clause was to secure by force of the guarantee the existing governments, and nothing else. Are we less republican now than we were then 7 Then these 171,000 people who now constitute a portion of the pop nlation of Maryland, or their ancestors, were slaves; now they are free. Is it less a republican government because the slave then is the free mannow? If there was nothing incon sistent with the existence of a republican government in not only excluding the black man from the right of voting but claiming the right to hold him as a chattel, he being a man, is it not less antirepublican to e xclude him now that he is a free man? What difference does it make, when we come to examine the question whether a republican government exists or not, that he is black 1 The definition of the honor able member places his charge of antirepublicanism as against the present forms of constitution upon the ground of theright to vote. I suppose the black man has no more natural right to vote than the white man. It is the exclusion from the right that affects the judgment of the honorable member from Massachusetts. Voting, according to him, is a right derived from God; it is in every man, inalienable, and its denial, therefOre, is inconsistent and incompatible with the true object of a free government. If it be such a right, it is not less a right in the white man than in the black man; it is not less a right in the Indian than in the white man or the black man; it is not less a right in the female portion of our population than in the male portion. Then the honorable member from Massachusetts is living in an antirepublican government, and he ought not to stay there a moment if he can find any government which would be a government according to his theory. None has existed since the world commenced, and it is not at all likely that any will exist in all time to come; but if there is any such Government to be found on the face of the earth, let him leave Massachusetts, let him bug that angelic delusion which he hopes will encircle the wholeworld, and go somewhere where he can indulge it without seeing before him every day conclusive evidence that no such illusion exists at home. Do you let every black and white man in Massachusetts vote? No; he must be able to read and write; he must be able to read the constitution of the U.S., and he must be able to read it in English. German or Frenchman, Italian or Chinese, if he has not been here long enough to be able to read the constitution of the U.S. in english, he cannot enjoy that in alienable right which it is tyranny to deny. He is taxed without representation, and that, in the language yof Otis, is tyrann. Leave Massachusetts, I beg the honorable member, just as soon as you can, or you will never be supremely happoyw., h Mr. au President, if I admit that the honorable member is right to that extent, if you are to take as a test of what a RFG is, the estimate entertained of it by our fathers, then every one of these goviternments is republican, and so far from your being authorized to invoke the guarantee to accomplish the pnr ose the honorable member has 1n view, it is Eis sworn duty, according to my view of it, as a enntor of the U.S., to insist that those governments shall stand as they are, that being the very object of the guarantee clause. I omitted or was about to omit to remark upon another of the guarantees to which the honorable member referred, the authority to interfere by legislation with this right of suffrage consequent upon the 2nd clause of the amendment of the constitution abolishing slavery. He says it may be done under that section. With due deference to him, I think it is very obvious that it cannot be accomplished under it. In that I believe the whole of the committee of 15 concurred. He proposes to reulate the right of suffrage in the States in over to secure to the negro the privilege ven him by this constitutional amendment. hat is that privilege? "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude. except ua punishment for crime whereof the partyshall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the U.S., or in any place subjectto their jurisdiction.” In no court, before no tribunal of any descriptionexecutive, legislative,or judicial of the U.S., or of any State. would it be pretended that the institution of slavery now as any existence; it is abolished. What did we think? That difficulties might be thrown in the wa of this constitutional provision by some of o States. This institution had been the growth of more than a century. It had wound itself into all their domestic arrangements. They were as much attached to it as the North is attached to any domestic institution of its own. They honestly believed that there was nothing wrong in it mean the majority of them. They honestly believed that there was nothing injurious in it to the country. They honestly believed that it was a divine institution. We have cured them of that, or if we have not, they have cured themselves by beginning this war. But looking to the condition in which the southern mind was at the time, we thought I for one thought it, and for that reason I voted for this 2nd section that those negroes, although no one would have a right to hold them in slavery, might still in point of fact be enslaved. How enslaved? e denied some right incidental to the destruction of slavery. Then we said, it may be, looking to the decisions of the Supreme Court, that the mere abolition of slavery will give to Congress no legislative power. That court in a variety of cases have decided that nothing can be done by congress under any clause of the constitution which does not confer upon that body some power. A mere negation of aright clothes Congress with no legislative authority. Now, if we abolished slavery at once and did nothing more, it might be that Congress could not legislate at all on the subject, and these people would be left to the mercy of the legislation of the States in which the institution had existed. In order to guard is ainst that we adopted the provision to be foun in the 2nd section of the constitutional amendment and what is that? “Con gress shall have power”to do what? “To enforce this article.” By what? “ By appropriate legislation.” That is, Congress 5 all have power by appropriate legislation to enforce this article and what is this article? An article declaring that slavery shall no longer exist in the U.S. Does the honorable member mean to say that. no man is a free man who is not entitled to vote? You would make slaves of 1/3rd of the people of Massachusetts; you would make slaves of all the women of Massachusetts, if that be the test.