Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I am asked, with quite an air of certainty on the part of the chairman of the ComJudiciary, whether the children of persons of barbarian races, born in this country, are not from that very fact citizens of this country. I am not prepared upon the moment to furnish authorities upon this point; but I am certainly very clear that in Pennsylvania that is not the law, and never has been the law; and to assert that it is the law, in my judgment, is to betray an utter want ot comprehension, an utter inappreciation of the fundamental principles which underlie the whole of our system. ho was it that established this Government? They were people who brought here the charter of their liberties with them; they were the free men who emigrated to this country and established these governments, and they established them under charters legally granted them by the Crown of GreatBritain originally. B the terms of the charters they were the actua possessors of the political power of the colonies, and they alone had the right to say whom they would admit to a coenjoyment of that power with them. It is true that the colonists of this country, when they came here and established their governments, did o on the door of these privileges wide to men oft eir own race from Europe. They opened it to the Irishman: they opened it to the German, they opened it to the Sean vian races of the orth. But where did t pen it to the barbarian races of Asia or of Africa? Nowhere. There may be no positive prohibition; but the courts always administered the law upon the basis that it was only the free men who established this Government and those whom the free men admitted with them to an enjoyment of political power that were entitled to it. he identical question came up in my State the question whether the negro was a citizen, and whether he possessed political power in that State and it was there decided that he was not one of the original corporators, that he was not one of the free men who oriinally possessed political power, and that they had never, by any enactment or by an act of theirs, admitted him into a participation of that power, except sofar as to tax him for the support of government. and, Mr. President, f think it a most important question, and particularly a most imgortant question for the Pacific coast, and those States which lie upon it, as to whether this door shall now be thrown open to the Asiatic population. It it be, there is an end to republican government there, because it is very we l ascertained that those people have no appreciation of that form of government; it seems to be obnoxious to their very nature; the seem to be incapable either of understanding it or of carrying it out; and I cannot consent to say that California, or Oregon, or Colorado, or Nevada, or any of those States shall be given over to an irruption of Chinese. I, for my part, protest against it. I may say, while I am up, that I am Opposed to the whole of this 1st section entirqsy; an, in my judgment, it has not a particle of constitutional warrant. As I understand the chair man of the ComJudiciary, he takes his ground upon an amendment to the constitution of the U.S. recently passed. The 1st section of that amendment is in these words: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a iunishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the U.S or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ”Now, Mr. President and gentlemen of the Senate, in all good faith, what was the meaning of that? What was its intent? Can there be any doubt of it? Is there a sane man within the sound of my voice who does not know precisely what was intended by the American people in adopting that amendment to the Constitution? I may say there is no shirking this thing; there is no way of dodging it or avoiding it. We must meet; it and it we are men we will meet it, and we will meet it in the spirit in which it was made. That amendment, everybody knows and nobody dare den, was simply made to liberate the negro slave from his master. That is all there is of it. Will the chairman of the ComJudiciary or anybody else undertake to say that that was to prevent the involuntary servitude of my child to me. of my apprentice to me, or the quasi servitude which the wife to some extent owes to her husband? Certainly not. Nobody pretends that it was to be wider in its operation than to cover the relation which existed between the master and his negro African slave. Now, mark it, that particular relation and the breaking of it n, is the subject of that 1st clause of the amendment, and it does not extend any further, and cannot by any possible implication, contortion, or straining, be made to go further among honest men. That was followed by another clause, and o. very proper clause. which everybody at the time understood, and which I have never known anybody to be mistaken about until I came into the Senate of the U.S. this session. That other clause was this: “ Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Enforce what? The breaking of the bond by which the negro slave was held to his master; that is all. It was not intended to overturn this Government and to revolutionize all the laws of the various States everywhere. It was intended, in other words, and a lawyer would have so construed it, to give to the negro the privilege of the habeascorpus, that is, if anybody persisted in the face of the constitutional amendment in holding him as a slave, that he should have an appropriate remedy to be delivered. That is all. Now, let us see what is made out of that simple provision. The bill provides in its 1st section that “there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the U.S. on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery.” Previous condition of slavery, ” I agree, is a certain enough phrase in the law; but I should like the honorable Senfrom Illinois or any other Senator to tell me what is meant by the word “race, ” and where it is settled that there are 2 races of men, and if it is settled that there are 2 or more, how many. Where is the line to be drawn? What constitute the distinctive characteristics and marks which limit and bind these races? If a State did not desire to make a distinction on account of race, I suppose it might lawfully make a distinction on account of hair. If it desired to single out any class of its citizens and subject them to special laws, it would be a good description, and would not be obnoxious to the terms of this bill, if it were to say that it should apply to all persons whose hair was ribbon shape and our ed naturally, and not to persons whose hair was cylindritorm. Then “color” is another vaird upon which nobody is very well advised just at Men are of all shades of color, and teraces of men differ from the deepest jet up to the fairest of lily white all over the world. But I am not disposed to quarrel with that part of the bill, and I only notice it as an indication of the present. loose manner in which we legislate about these subjects. I go on a little further: But the inhabitants of every race and color. with i novuotlruengtaarrdy tsocraVniytupdree. Veixo uespet as condition of slavery or a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly conVicted shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts and I beg gentlemen who represent great States here to listen the same right to make and enforce contracts, tp sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit. purchase, loge. sell, hold, and convey real and personal proper. Why, Mr. President, if under color of this constitutional amendment we have a right to pass such a law as this, we have a right to over turn the States themselves completely; and will you be surprised when I tell on that this repeals statutes of Pennsylvania, which I have under my lingers; and not only repeals them, but by the provisions of this bi lthe judges another Officers of Pennsylvania who should undertake to enforce her own laws would be subject, not to revision in a court of error, but subject toa criminal prosecution in courts where the ur are the judges not only of the fact, but of tclaw as well, under our system? I suppose if there is anyone thing more than another which a State prizes it is 1st she has the right to regulate the descent of estates. There is not a State in the Union which has not statutes to regulate the descent and distribution of estates, and I do not know whether there are an States in the Union who have not. certain provisions on that subject with regard to aliens. It is only by an especial statute in Pennsylvania that aliens can inherit the estates of deceased ancestors, and that perhaps in compliment to the fact that the great majority of our peoplewere originallyof foreign blood, and V if there was not a reciprocity between Penusvlvania and the foreign State we might be the sutferers by it. If we did not allow the foreign heirs to in icrit from the domiciled ancestor here, they might not allow the emigrant here to inherit from the ancestor who remained abroad. But there is a provision in our statutes which will be repeale by this bill if it becomes a law. Let me read it: "It shall and may be lawful for any alien or aliens actuall resident within this Commonwealth. unrlnot biimr the subject pr subjects of some sovereign State o Power, which is or shall be. at the time or times of such purchase or purchases, at war with the U.S.A. to purchase lands, tenements and hereditnments within this Commonwealth, and tohave and to hold the same in fee simple or for any less estate fully, to all intents and purposes as iirn natural born citizen or citizens may orcundo: Provided always, That such alien or alien shall Previously to such purchase or purchases, declare hiosr their intention to become a citizen or citizens of the U.S., agreeably to any law of the U.S. at that time in force upon that subject: and provided That no such alien or aliens shall be competent to purchase and hold more than 500 acres until he or they shall have actually become a citizen or citizens of the U.S. ” Now, it will be observed that the provisions of this bill override and contravene that law of ours. What I mean to say is that nobody can pretend, nobody can believe that it was intended by this clause of the constitution to confer any such authority as that upon this Government.