Mr. HNson. Certainly. I am perfectly aware of that opinion, and one or 2 others to the same effect. That does not interfere with the view which I am endeavoring to present to the Senate, and particularly to the honorable member. Nobody has ever questioned that the people of a Territory have no right, strictly speaking, to form themselves into a State government and get clear of the obligation that they are under to the Government of the U.S. because of the terri torial government which the U.S. have provided for them without the consent of Congress; but, as we all know, and as that opinion admits, from time to time the people of the Territories have, not casting off their territorial allegiance, their allegiance to the U.S. as the citizens of a Territory, formed governments for themselves, and they have been admitted. Now the honorable member gets clear of the difficulty which I suggested in answer to his objection that this was not a State, by saying that when we pass the law it retroacts. That is an extraordinary power on the part of Congress. The power in Congress is to admit; that is all; admit an existing State. Nobody has ever pretended that Congress has any authority to constitute a State. As was said by the honorable member from Kansas [Mr. Pomeroy] before the recess, Congress has no authority, nor has the Government of the U.S. in all its depts any authority to form a State constitution or to ereate a State. That must be the work of the citizens; and if the citizens, either with or without an enabling act, form a State government and Congress admit that State government, they, by the very act of admission, coneede that that is a State at the moment of admission, which should be one of the States of the Union, not a crippled member of the Union, but one possessing all the powers possessed by any other of the States of the Union. I have therefore, Mr. President, been unable to agree to this amendment, because, as I think, Congress has no authority, with or without the assent of a State, to impose any such condition. The right of equal power is a right not intended only to be given and therefore to be disposed of by the people of the State for the time being who may be there when they are admitted into the Union as a State, but it is to follow them and their descendants to the last generation as long as the Government endures. The doctrine which maintains that we have the authority to impose conditions deals with the subject as if the people for the time being were alone concerned in having their State possess equal powers with the rest of the States; but that is not the theory of the Constitution. There are some other rights which are inalienable; the DeclarIndep says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; but that is relied upon for a different purpose. There are other rights, political in their character, which are also inalienable as long as our Government endures, and those rights are the political rights secured to States in order to enable them to be the equals of all their sisters, and to bring to the preservation of the Government through all time precisely an equal amount of authority which may be possessed politically by any other member of the Union. In other words, Mr. President, and to conclude, we were intended to be equal as States equal individually as men. Equality is impressed by the Constitution upon both characters upon the political character of the citizens composing a State, and upon their individual character as citizens. No distinction was designed to be created. It was the purpose of the Constitution to place all upon the high, elevated ground of equality of political and individual rights; and that being the case, in my judgment, it necessarily follows that the amendment upon the table cannot be constitutionally supported.