Mr. JOHNSON. do not object to the interrogatory at all, and I admit in answer to the interrogatory, that in the case supposed by the honorable gentleman there would be no deduction, they would all be embraced: but if other States as well as NewYork admitting the colored man to vote at all, require a qualification which they do not exact of the white man, then the entire colored men within the limits of the State are to be deducted from the estimate. But, Mr. President, there is another question, which the Senate will have to meet and the country will have to meet if this amendment is adopted. How many States in the Union now admit the colored man to the exercise of the right of suffrage? Only 6. In every State exceptMaine, Vermont, NewHampshire, Massachusetts, RhdIsland, there is a distinction in regard to suffrage on the ground of color. In Massachusetts, only males of 20 one years of age who can read the constitution in the English language or write their names, can vote. I ask not how many States admit them to the exercise of the right of franchise by requiring of them a different qualification from that which they require of the white voter, but how many of them positively exclude them from the exercise of the right of franchise? We have 36 States in the Union, supposing the soutern States not to be out. 11 are supposed to be out. Now admit, for the sake of the argument, that they are to be estecmed as out, how many of those who are claimed to be in and who are admitted to be in, whose representatives are on this floor, give to the colored man the right of franchise? Only six; and unless the States change their policy and I am by no means persuaded they will; on the contrary, as far as I have an opinion on the subject, I believe they will not, and that opinion is formed upon the occurrences of the time if this amendment passes, there is hardly one of those States that would not lose a rere. sentative, or more than one, provided they adthis population among them. They may be willingI do not speak of the Senators on this floorto adopt an amendment of this kind, because it will not operate upon them, because it will not diminish their power. They may be willing to adopt itbecause it will operate upon and will diminish the power of the States in which the race is to be found. Let me see. 4 or 5 States are sufficient for the illustration of the proposition which I have just stated. I take from the census of 1860 the figures I am about to present. Massachusetts has awhite population of 1, 221, 961, and a colored population of only o, 602. NewYork has a white population of 3,831,730, and a colored poulation of 49, 005; Vermont 9. white population of 819, 389, and a colored population of 709. The State of NewHampshire, which my friend before me [Mr. CLARK] Represents with so much ability and so much zeal and so much usefulness to his Statehe is in favor of this amendment in some form or other has a white population of 325, 579 and acol ored population of 424. The experiment is quite a safe one for them. They will not be affected by it injuriously. They will loseno Representative, but on the contrary they gain, not 11]the number of Representatives perhaps, but they gain in the relative influence of the Representatives that they will have on the floor. They will be met, not by the corresponding Representatives of the other States in numbers, such as the constitution of 1789 designed those other States should have, but they will be met by Representatives less by 1/3rd than those that our fathers thought should be the number of Representatives of those States. The chairs in the other Hall that are placed there for the purpose of accommodating the Representatives of the southern States will be more or less vacated, and whu for? Is it from the danger of having them filled? Are not the North and the statesmen of the North equalto the South and the statesmen of the South on all subjects that may come before the councils of the nation? What is there, looking to the history of the 2 sections in the past, which would lead us to believe that the North is inferior to the South in anything of intellectual improvement or of statesmanship? You have proved, and I thank God you have proved, that if list ening to evil counsels, rendered effective perhaps by your own misjud edlegislation, and by the illadvised course o your own population, exhibited through the ress and the pul pit, a portion of the outh involved the country inawar, the may itudeof which nolanguage can describe ou have proved yourselves ade quate to the duty of defeating them in their mad and, as faras theletter of the constitution is conce rned, their traitorous purpose and now, having proved your physical manhood, do on doubt your intellectual manhood? Mr. hresident, in the presence in which I speak, I am restrained from speaking comparatively of theSenate as it is and the Senate as it has been; but I can say this with as much sincerity as man everspoke, that there is nothing to be found in the free States calculated to disparage them properly in the estimation of the wise and the goog. They are able to conduct the Government, and they will not be the less able because they have the advice and the counsels of their southern brethren and yet, applying for illustration to the population of my own State, you will see how the proposed amendment will operate upon her. She has a white population of 515, 918 and a colored population of 171, 131, about one 4th of the entire number within her territorial lim its; and if she refuses to let anyone black man vote in point of fact, or refuses it by requiring a quslication which she does not require from any white man, the whole of the 171,000 are to be deducted from the estimate. Is that just? The honorable member from Massachusetts thinks it is; and why? Because the declaration of rights proclaims all men equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The honorable member says that not to give all men the privilege of voting is to leave Maryland an oligarchy, an aristocracy, a monopoly, a caste. I say we have been under a very extraordinary delusion from 1776 to the present time. We have believed, and the country has believed with us, that the government of Maryland was of a republican form. It never entered into the imagination of the great men who framed her constitution of 1775, nor of their great contemporaries who constituted the Convention of 1789, that there was anything in the constitution of that State which gave anybody a right to characterize it as an oligarchy, an aristocracy, a monopoly, a caste. The honorable member from h assachusetts is the inventor of that proposition. But if it be right, I ask the Senate why they do not seek to attain the right directly. Why endeavor to do it indirectly? If the existin constitution of MarylandI instance Marylan only for the purpose of illustrationis not republican, and cannot be republican unless all the colored people within her limits are entitled to vote precisely as the white men within her limits are entitled to vote, tell her so; change your constitution and make it our duty by your paramount law to place them on the same footing. But to do that, you must place our own States in the same condition. lhen hiaine is to be deprived of the right of regulating the suffrage in her State; NewYork is to be deprived ofit; and so of all the other States. If it be right, if no government wheres provision of that sort is not incorporated as one of its fundamental laws is republican in the sense of the constitution of the U.S. then it is consequently right that we should make it republican by constitutional enactment. Why do you not do it? I will not say because you know it cannot be done; but the fact is you ought to know that it cannot be accomplished, right or wrong. It is an evil, if it be one, without remedy. The States will not adopt it. They will stand upon the constitution their fathers gave them. They will claim for themselves, audinm judgment even to the point of revolution, and I say it in no threatening sense, because such a proposition is not before us, but if it was they would claim even to the point of revolution that they should have a right to regulate suffrage within their own limits. That brings me to consider whether they have not that right. The honorable member from Massachusetts has gravely told us in a speech elaborate in its preparation and full of the lizarning whichever characterizes the performances of the honorable member, that they have no right now, except only so long as Congress shall forbear to exercise its own power of regulating the right of suffrage. He derives the power so to regulate State suffrage from the declaration of rights; from the necessity growing out of the war; from that clause of the constitution which guaranties to each State a, RFG; and, finally, from the 2nd clause of the recent amendment to the constitution abolishing slavery. I will take these 4 up in their order, for the purpose of showing to the Senate that neither of them has the slightest applicationI speak it with all respect to the honorable memberto the proposition for which he referred to them. The question is, what did our fathers design? lliere was the regulation of sutirage to be left? Until modern timeand I mean by modern time the last 3 or 4 yearsno man was so wild as to imagine that the suffrage was not exclusively for State jurisdiction. The constitution went into operation in 1789; and during the long period that elapsed from that time to the breaing out of this rebellion, no man an vwhere suggested that it was in the power o Congress to interfere with the right of suffrage in the States; and it could not be otherwise, the constitution from its very nature being a rant of specific powers, and nothing else. the principle is stated, with that rare felicity which characterized everything that came from his pen, by Chancellor Kent, in the 1st volume of his Commentaries in these words: I “The constitution of the U.S. is an instrument containing the rrant of specificpowers, and the Government of the nion cannot claim any powers bntwhnt are contained in the grant, and given either expressly or by necessary implication. Iho powars vestedin the State governmentsby their respective constitutions or remaining with the people of the several Statesprior to the establishment of the constitution of the U.S., continueunaltered and unimpaired exceptso far as they are granted to the U.S. ” I on use that even the honorable member from Kfiissachusetts will not deny that it was for Massachusetts to regulate her suffrage before 1789; and if it was, she has the power still, unless she has agreed to art with it by devolving it upon the General vernment. Is there a word in the constitution that intimates such a purpose? The 2nd section of the 1st article eals exclusively with the manner in which the members to compose the HoRep of the U.S. are to be selected. It says in the 1st art of the clause nothing at all as to the right of) suffrage. It provides, ” the HoRep shalrbe composed of members chosen every 2nd car by the people of the several States.” If it had stopped there, it might perhaps be contended that it would have been in the power of the Congress of the U.S. to regulate the manner in which the people of the States were to choose Representatives; but the trouble is that it goes on to say who are to be the electors of the Representatives that are to compose in point of numbers the House; and it says, “and the electors in each State ” that is to say the voters in each State, for 1 electors ” as used here, is synonymous with “voters” “ Apd the electors in eachStateshallhave the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.” Who at that time was clothed with the power of prescribing the qualification of electors for the mest numerous branch of the State Legislature? The State; nobody else. The provision therefore means and is to be read in this way: the House shall be composed of members chosen every 2nd year by the people, and the electors in each State shall be entitled to vote in the choice of such Representatives if they have the qualifications prescribed by their own constitution and laws for choosing the most numerous branch of their own State legislature. Exceptin that clause, and anothere nose to which Isall refer presently, there is nothing in the instrument that says anything about the election of Representatives. The honorable member has quoted Mr. Madison. He supposes that Mr. Madison was of the opinion that the rightofsuffruge might be controlled by Congress. He referred to the 54th number of the Federalist, and I think the honorable member attributed that paperto Mr. Hamilton. About that, as I am sure he is aware, there are more than serious doubts. It was given to Mr. Jay by Mr. Hamilton; but it was uniformly claimed by Mr. Madison. The edition which I hold in my hand was prepared as far as that particular question was concerned under the advice and inspection of Mr. Madison; and in it he takes to himself the author ship of number 54; and I rather think. from a frequent and careful examination of these papers as written by the 3 eminent men to whom the country is so much indebted for their production, that the style is more the style of adison than of Hamilton. It is more precise, and I was about to say more erspic uous because it is more precise. Hami ton was more in the habit of a orning his papers than Madison. Now, what does Mr. Madison, or whoever is the author of number 54, say? If the honorable member from Massachusetts will listen for aimomcut, I think he will see that he took it for granted that the States alone could regulate the franchise. vThe number is that which deals with the ratio of representation. I will read from it a sentence or 2: “It is not contended that the number of people in each State ought not to be the standard for regulating the proportion of thosewho are to representthe. peopleofoaoh State. The establishment of the same rule for the apportionment of taxeswill probably be as little contested.” Then he goes on to state that, under all the circumstances, there is no better way of ascertaining the proportion of taxes which the several States should be made to pay than adopting the same standard by which the basis of representation was arrive at. The South was dissatisfied with oneportion of the rdvision, and the North was issatisfied with another portion. The South insisted that if their negroes were to be considered as persons at all t in whole number should be counted. The North insisted that if they were to be considered as property no portion should be counted. Mr. Madison, after stating the objection to the clause made by each party, says that it is a fundamental principle of the proposed constitution that the ag egate mom or of Representatives was to be determined by a Federal rule ounded on the aggregate number of the inhab itants. He goes onto state, as another fundamental rule that the right of choosing that number shall be leftto the States. I shall make myself better understood by citing his language; “It is a fundamental principle of the proposed constitution that, as the aggregatenumber of re) Representatives allotted to the several States is to determinedby a Federal rule. founded on the aggre gate number of inhabitants so the right of choosin this allotted number in out i by State is to be exercised such part of the inhabitants as the State itself may designate.” Words could not have been adopted more obviously leading to the conclusion that in the opinion of the writers of the Federalist, the States were to have the sole right of regulating the suffrage; otherwise what a contradiction would he the result. The honorable member from Massachusetts says we have a right to regulate the suffrage in the States, because we have the right to regulate thenumber of Representatives in the other House. How are weto regulate the suffrage in the choice of members of Congress? It is not proposed to rescind that part of the provision which says that they are to be chosen by the electors who choose the most numerous branch of the State Legislature t That is to be left; that you do not propose to disturb; and if you do not propose to disturb it, what you would be compel! to do in order to accomplish your object is to have one mode of electing Representatives to Congress and another mode of electin members of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. But nobody dreams of interfering with the right of the States to regulate suffrage with reference to their own officers, or of interfering with the right of the States to appoint their own offiicers, or to elect their own officers, and to prescribe the qualifications which the electors of their own officers are to have. Nobody has ever dreamed that this Government was to step within the limits of State lines and hell the States how their Legislatures shall be elected, how their officers shall be chosen. If the honorable member is right in the theory for which he contends, it would follow that we should have one mode for the exercise of the right of suffrage in electing Representatives, and anothermodefif the States thought proper to adopt another mode, for electing members of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature; and yet the constitution in its very terms prescribes that the mode of electing shall be thesame. Ifyou have no right and that I assume in what I am now about to sayto interfere with the elective franchise by prescribing the qualitications of voters in the several States, is it right, is itjust, is it fair that you should attempt to do it indirectly? h