Mr. BUCKALEW. I desire to say before the vote is taken on this amendment that I shall vote in favor of it because of the particular position which it occupies. A vote given for this amendment is not a final one. I understand it to pronounce an opinion upon the 2 propositions which have i.lo, consideration in the Senate, in a comparative manner, if I may use the expression. In voting for this proposition I affirm simply that the principles and the reasoning upon which the o itself, as reported by the committee, is based, would apply with equal, if not increased force, to the particular proposition contained in the amendment. If that be affirmed, then recurs the question whether it is proper, whether it is expedient at this time to increase, and very exten sively increase, suffrage in this country. I do not understand that the general argument on that question is involved in the present motion. I do not understand that it comes up of necessity in considering the proposition covered by the amendment of my colleague which stands simply in contrast with that contained in the bill. I presume there are several gentlemen, members of this body, who will vote with reference to this consideration and who will reserve their opinion, either openly or in their own consciousness, upon the general or indirect question of the extension .to the females of the U.S. But the occasion invites some remarks beyond the mere statement of this point. The debates which have been going on for 3 days in this Chamber will go out to the country. They will constitute an element in the popular discussions of the times and awaken a large amount of public attention. This is not the last we shall hear of this subject. It will come to us again; and I am persuaded that one reason why it will come again is that the arguments against the proposed extension of suffrage have not been sufficient; they have been inadequate; they have been placed upon grounds which will not endure debate. Those who are in favor of the extension of suffrage to females can answer what has been said in this Chamber, and they can answer it triumph antly; and you will eventually be obliged to take other grounds than those which have been here stated. From the beginning of this debate there has been either an open or an implied concession of the principle upon which the extension of suffrage is asked; and that is, that there is some natural right or propriety in extending it further than it was extended by those who formed our State and Federal constitutions; that there is some principle of right or of propriety involved which now appeals powerfully to usin favor of extended and liberal action in behalf of those large classes who have been hitherto disfranchised; upon whom the right of suffrage has not been heretofore conferred. Having made this concession upon the fundamental ground of the inquiry, or at all events intimated it, the opponents of an extended franchise pass on to particular arguments of inconvenience or inexpediency as constituting the grounds of their opposition. Now, sir, I venture to say that those who resist the extension of suffrage in this country will be unsuccessful in their opposition; they will be overborne, unless they assume grounds of a more commanding character than those which they have here maintained. This subject of the extension of suffrage must be put upon practical grounds and extricated from the sophisms of theoretical reasoning. gentlemen must get out of the domain of theory. They must come back again to those principles of action upon which our fathers proceeded in framing our constitutional system. They lodged suffrage in this country simply in those whom they thought most worthy and most fit to exercise it. They did not proceed upon those humanitarian theories which have since obtained and which now seem to have taken a oonsiderable hold on the public mind. They were practical men, and acted with reference to the history and experience of mankind. They were not metaphysicians; they were not reformers in the modern sense of the term; they were men who based their political action upon the experience of mankind and upon those practical reflections with reference to men and things in which they had indulged in active life. They placed suffrage then upon the broad common sense principle that it should be lodged in and exercised by those who could use it most wisely and most safely and most effieiently to serve the great ends for which Government was instituted. They had no other ground than this, and their work shows that they proceeded upon it, and not upon any abstract or transcendental notion of human rights which ignored the existing facts of social life. Now, sir, the objection which I have to a large extension of suffrage in this country, whether by Federal or State power, is this: that thereby, you will corrupt and degrade elections, and probably lead to their complete abrogation hereafter. By pouring into the ballot boxes of the country a large mass of ignorant votes, and votes subjected to pecuni ary or social influence, you will corrupt and degrade your elections and lay the foundation for their ultimate destruction. That is a conviction of mine, and it is upon that ground that I resist both negro suffrage and female suffrage and any other proposed form of suffrage which takes humanity in an unduly broad or enlarged sense as the foundation of an aroongonent, of political power. Mr. President, I proposed before the debate concluded, before this subject should be submitted to the Senate for its final decision, to protest against some of the reasoning by which this amendment was resisted. I intended to protest against particular arguments which were submitted; but I was glad this morning that that duty which I had proposed to myself was discharged, and well discharged by the Senfrom Missouri, [Mr. BRowN] For instance, the argument that the right of suffrage ought not to be conferred upon this particular class because they did not or could not bear arms a consideration totally foreign and irrelevant, in my opinion, to the question which we are discussing. But, sir, passing this by, I desire to add a few words before I conclude upon another point which was stated or suggested by the Senfrom Missouri, and that is the question of reform or improvement in our election system; I mean in the machinery by which or plans upon which those elections proceed. After due reflection given to this subject, my opinion is that our electoral systems in this country are exceedingly defective, that they require thorough revision, that to them the hand of reform must be strongly applied if republican institutions are to be ultimately successful with us. I would see much less objection to your extension of the right of suffrage very largely to classes now excluded if you had a different mode of voting, if you did take or could take the sense of those added classes in a different manner from that which now obtains in popular voting. You proceed at present upon the principle or rule that a mere majority of the electoral community shall possess the whole mass of political power; and what are the “nevitable results 7 1st, that the community is divided into parties, and into parties not very unequal in their aggregate numbers. What next? That the balance of power between parties is held by a very small number of voters; and in practical action what is the fact? That the struggle is constantly for that balance of power, and in order to obtain it all the arts and all the evil influences of elections are called into action. It is this struggle for that balance of power that breeds most of the evils of your system of popular elections. Now, is it not possible to have republican institutions and to eliminate or decrease largely this element of evil? Why, sir, take the State of Pennsylvania, whose voice, perhaps, in this Government is to give direction to its legislation at a given time, and take a pecuniary interestin the country largely interested in your laws, looking forward upon the eve of a hotly contested election to some particular measures of Government which shall favor it: with what ease can that interest throw into the State a pecuniary contribution competent to turn the voice of that powerful State and change or determine the policy of your Government. And why s2o It is only necessary that this corruptinfluence should be exerted very slightly indeed within that State from abroad in order to turn the scale, because you are only to exert your pernicious power upon a small number of persons who hold the balance of power between parties therein. Sir, that organization of our system which allows such a state of things to occur must be inherently vicious. Instead of this being a Government of the whole people, which is our fundamental principle, which is our original idea, it is a Government, in the 1st place, of a majority only of the people; and in the next place, it is in some sort a Government of that small number of persons who give preponderance to one party over another, and who may be.influenced by fanaticism, corruption, or passion. This being our political state at present with reference to electoral action, what do you propose? We have a great evil. Electoral corruption is the great : in our path. It is the evil in our system against which we must constantly struggle. Every patriot and every honest man here and in his own Stateis bound to lift his voice and to strike boldly against it in all its forms, and it requires for its repression all the efforts and all the exertion we can put forth. Now what is proposed by the reformers of the present time? We have our majority rule it is not a principle; it is an abuse of terms to call it a principle we have our majority rule in full action, presenting an invitation to corrupt, base, and sinister influences to attach themselves to our system; we have great difficulties with which we now struggle arising from imperfect arrangements, and what do you propose? To reform existing evils and abuses? To correct your system? To study it as patriots, as men of reflection and good sense? No, sir. You propose to introduce into our electoral bodies new elements of enormous magnitude. You propose to take the base of society, excluded now, and build upon it, and upon it alone or mainly, because the introduction of the enormous mass of voters proposed by the reformers will wholly change the foundations upon which you build. Will not these new electors you propose to introduce be more approachable than men who now vote to all corrupt influences? Will they not be more passionate and therefore more easily influenced by the demagogue? Will they not be more easily caught and enraptured by superficial declamation, because more incapable of profound reflection? Will not their weakness render them subservient to the strong and their ignorance to the artful? I shall not, however, detain you with an elaborate argument upon this question of suffrage. I only feel myself called upon to say enough to indicate the general direction of my reflections upon the questions before us; to show why it is that I am immovably opposed at this time to extending our system of suffrage in the DistCol or elsewhere so as to include large classes of persons who are now excluded; and to state my opinion that reform or change should be concerned with the correction of the existing evils of our electoral system, instead of with the enlargement of its boundaries.