Mr. EDMUNDS. That is exactly what I was saying. I stated the gentleman's position to be exactly that; and the only reason he gave us he may have some better one, but the only one which he has honored us by stating was the numerous instances of abuse which it might lead to; and thus, in reply to that, I have said that we have high authority, if we need authority on such a question, for saying that the fact that a power may be abused is no argument at all against its My existence. friend asks what would become of State rights if Congress were to exercise powers of this description? Let me reply by inquiring what will become of State rights unless we create these States? They have not any State rights now. This constitution which is offered to us is nothing but waste paper until we breathe into it the breath of life by the power of our legislative authority. It is the supreme law of the land that we make under the constitution, which creates this State at all; and I have been taught, in my little reading of law to suppose that the power to create implie the power to affix qualifications and conditions in the act of that creation, which should follow its life until it should terminate as an inherent and inseparable part of its existence. But my friend says, “What if these people do not accept it? What then? Where are they?” The same answer may be made when we create any corporation. We endow a body of men with corporate privileges. Suppose they do not exercise them; suppose they do not accept the boon which we offer to them; does that prove that we have not the F. to create the corporation? Suppose they lapse; suppose they i.disorganized as the southern States have; does that demonstrate that we have no power to revitalize them upon other conditions or to govern them in their disorganized condition under the paramount law of the land?. My friend voted with me for the civil rights bill, which undertook to regulate private rights in every State of the country, o and new; and he voted for Iit, suppose, as I did, under, the Constitution of the country which authorized us, passing laws in accordance with that constitution, to see that they were executed upon the citizens of every State. We are not passing laws here for the State of Nebraska in its political capacity. We have no relations, or very few indeed, with any State in its political capacity. Those relations are all pointed out explicitly and expressly in the Constitution itself. But the relations of this national government with the people of the State are personal and direct; and it is upon the people in their individual and separate coacities as citizens that the law operates. Therefore, if a State fails to fulfill its functions, if the State of Vermont or the State of Michigan dislikes the conditions upon which it has been admitted, and chooses to elect no Senators or members of Congress or members of the Legislature, and chooses to become wholly disorganized, are the eop.le of either of them any less citizens of the States than they were before? Does not the paramount law of the land still operate upon their persons and upon their property? Or are they adrift and loose in the world, with no power on the part of the Government to regulate their conduct toward the rest of the country? I do not believe in any such doctrine. This proposition which I advance is not a new proposition; the power which it seeks to exercise is not a new power. In some form or other it has been exercised from the beginning of the Government to this day; because, as I said before, those conditions which we have heretofore imposed to be incorporated into the constitutions of these States, the conditions which we imposed by the act of 1864 to be incorporated into this very Constitution, have their only force and vitality from our action; for, so far as it depends upon the will of that people, they may change that will tomorrow and reconsider it and set it aside, and then so far as their action was concerned, it would no longer exist; but the paramount law under which that Constitution was formed and which created its very existence remains intact and in vigorous force and exercise as it did before. That is my position, and standing upon that position I am quite ready to meet the Senator.