Mr. COWAN. Well, I may be misinformed there, because really I have not read Brant for a long while; it may have originated in Pennsylvania: but it has not been applied since my knowledge of the State commenced. I am very well satisfied that girls can get married there and do get married there every day, I am sure, without being able to bake a dough nut at all. oj. Here is the difference: I insist that this bar rier is no barrier; I insist that this test is no test, that it is no limitation whatever, that the virtue and intelligence of those classes which are entitled to the franchise are not to be measured in this way at all. They must be measured by the great good sense of the community. The community in which a man lives is to determine it. The question of suffrage, in other words, belongs to the States. When the community of Massachusetts determines that her negroes shall have a vote the same as white people, that is a just, righteous, legal determination of that, question. She has the right to make it, and it is an appeal to the good sense of Massachusetts to make it. So when the same question comes before Pennsylvania, which has ten or 15 times as many negroes as Massachusetts has, and Pennsylvania decides that this class of the community shall not vote, that is equally just, equally righteous, and equally legal in my judgment. And so it is everywhere else. Now, the question is before the Senate to decide for this community, the people of the DistCol; and the 1st question, and one which I think is important, is, is it safe? It has been admitted by the honorable Senfrom Connecticut that there is danger in admitting this class. The man who under takes to limit and to restrain it admits that danger. If there be danger then I argue that all the rest of us have a right to insist upon it that the barrier proposed shall be effective to protect against that danger. The danger admitted, the next question is as to the efficacy of the barrier against that danger. Just in proportion to the magnitude of the danger, just in the same proportion must be the efficacy of that which youset up in order to prevent its happening. Now, what is the danger? The danger is that which we have encountered, the dange?. of another rebellion, the danger that '. conferring ballots upon these men you furnish food for demagogues, you furnish the material upon which they live and upon which they run riot, oy which and through which they have destroyed heretofore governments and communities. That is the danger and the danger depicted by the honorable Senfrom Connecticut in terms much more exact and much more express ive than I could use. That is a great danger. That is the worst of all possible dangers. That is a danger that nobody heretofore apprehended from an admission of the white race to this privilege even in its widest latitude. Then I say if that be the character of the danger, as wise men here, feeling our responsibilities, acting as we do for the nation, we joioppose to it such safeguards as will at least protect against the danger we anticipate, the danger we know of the danger we have been warned of as the honorable Senator has warned us. I was rather surprised to hear the honorable Senator say that he would confer without any test and without any limit the right of suffrage upon those who had borne arms for their country. I have a very high respect for the soldier. I think that courage is the highest quality of man. I am so certain after all is said and done, but that the patriotic soldier, brave, exposing himself for his people and for his Government is the highest spectacle on the earth. But what connection is there between bearing arms and casting ballots? Have we forgotten the lessons of the past? Have we forgotten the fact that while one soldier is patriotic and brave and well deserving of the country, another is really mercenary? Have we forgotter the fact that it was the soldiery that overthrew republican Rome? Have you forgotten the fact that the Pretorian Guards were soldiers? Mr. President, the same kind of discrimination must be made with regard to soldiers that is made with regard to other men. I am free to say that I would award the highest meed of praise as I would give the highest pension and the highest pay to the soldier; but when a man asks me to make that the measure of his capa city to fulfill the duties of a citizen, I have a right to say to him that the evidence is not conclusive. He may be a very good soldier and a very bad citizen; and a man may be a very good citizen and yet make a very bad soldier. The evidence must in some way connect itself with the qualifications necessary to perform the function; and in so far this as far as it goes is well enough. But the difficulty is that if you depart from the strictly legal construction of the amendment of the honorable Senfrom Connecticut you are at sea, you have no guide; you are at the mercy of the corruptions of factions, their disregard of all law in the heat of contest, and your barrier or test becomes utterly and totally useless. Mr. President, I have said thus much on this point because I thought it necessary that I should say it. I have no faith whatever in these tests. If there is danger in front, that danger must be met and must be counteracted by something entirely different from this kind of flimsy bulwark.