Mr. COWAN. I have a very simple answer to all that. The right to life, liberty, property, is the gift of God; the right, to right vote and the to hold office, which is the same thing, is the gift of the community. That is all. negro who is prevented from having a vote in a community has no more right to complain of it than the defeated candidate after the election has a right to complain. Why? Because who shall vote is a question of expediency and policy for the community to decide. I ask my honorable friend himself if he saw this thing in the light in which I see it, if he saw in the future prospects of this District nothing but a strife between these 2 races of men, that their parties would be based upon their tribal distinctions, would he vote for this measure? Would he not say that it was better to tell the weaker: “You stand back, do not undertake to participate, because as long as you are the weaker you cannot be elected, and when you get to be the stronger the others cannot be elected.” That is the whole of it. It is not like widening the franchise and allowing men of the same race to come in; it is an entirely different question, and one which merits the most careful and serious consideration on the part of everybody intrusted with it. Does not every man know how much more easy it is to appeal to a sectional prejudice than it is to make an argument. How much easier is it for a man to say, “come my brother Irish man with me, ” or “come my German friend, ” or “you come the native?” This is the short way to make a party, and it is a very effectual one to make it evenowhite men; but what argument is there in it? We have lamented that tendency among ourselves. If that tendency exists among Germans, among Irishmen, and among native born people, to associate themselves together according to some external mark or symbol rather than to associate themselves upon principle and fortify themselves by argu.ment, if that is a mischief, will not this be much more so? Gentlemen talk about public opinion, the public opinion of the country. Why, Mr. Presi;dent, what is the public opinion of the country? It is hardly ten years since a Congress sat here which I suppose thought itself as wise a congress nearly as this is, which was called a KnowNothing body. Then instead of throwing suffrage to the dogs and giving it to everybody, suffrage was jto be a great right of the American citizen, the chosen heritage of the American people, not to be thrown out to foreigners and strange people who came from everywhere. Now I put it to you, Mr. President, to look back ten years. I do not know whether the honorable Senfrom Maine was a member of the Know Nothing party; but supposing him to have been in the Congress of the U.S. at that time, and supposing he were there to have introduced this proposition, what would public opinion have said then? What will pub. opinion say next year? I say to him now the public opinion in the DistCol, whether the ComDistrict knows it or not, is unanimously or nearly so against his measure. I tell him further that the opinion of the American people, the mass of them, is nearly unanimous against it, too. I agree that there are plenty of the American people who for some reason or other do not like the DistCol very well. They think it has rather a southern aspect; that there are many southerners living here; that it has rather been rebelliously inclined, and they do not care, they would probably delight in cramming negro su.down upon it; but no man is fool enough, even among them, to believe that this will benefit either the negro or the white man. It may be very comfortable in the hour of party rage and party passion to be able to do that to an antagonist when you have him down and when you have the exclusive power to legislate for him. I have no doubt but that there are large numbers of the American people who are exceedingly anxious to compel negro suffrage through the southern States. But has anyone of them ever made an argument to show that the southern States would be better governed; that there would be more peace and more quiet in consequence of it? I have never heard those arguments if they have been made, and I do not know how anybody could make them. My friendfrom Ohio excepts to this message of the President because the President happens to have said in it that the legislative power of a country is most likely to encroach upon the other depts. goes into a labored argument to show that it is impossible that they can encroach. Why, sir, what was the reason the Federal Constitution was made, what is the reason why our States have made constitutions? If legislatures are always right, if they are always obedient to the monitions and the will of the people, what are your constitutions for? Is not a constitution made to restrain the legislature? Is it not made to restrain the legislature just as the law is made to restrain the individual? Why restrain the legislature? Because there is a possibility that the legislature may do wrong, may encroach. That very possibility stood up so strongly before the eyes of our fathers that they made a constitutional wall against it; but now the honorable Senfrom Ohio says there is no danger from it at all.. Oh, there was no danger, of course, from a legislative assembly in France during the revolution; that convention was perfectly safe; it was the representative of the people; but what did it end in? It ended in the destruction of everything, sacred and profane; all went down in an indiscriminate mass together. Mr. President, legislatures are dangerous, executives are dangerous, courts are dangerous. Power is always dangerous. Power must always be curbed and must always be restrained, and I fear me very much that constitutions will fail to do it. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, ” never to sleep in the presence of these encroachments. i.honorable Senator might find this Congress in such a shape that a minority could govern the majority if certain recedents are followed. The majority in this dy can turn out a refractory member. The majority in this body can turn out a member if he does not happen to be elected by a majority of the Legislature of his State in the way that this body thinks that majority ought to elect. A majority in this body and in the other House have undertaken to build up a wall around themselves by requiring those who come from certain sections of the Union to take an oath that none of them can take. Does not that look a little like encroachment on the part of the legislative body? What right have we to affix a qualification to a Senator when he comes into this body? If, according to the origi nal bargain, Pennsylvania elects a man 30 years of age, a resident of that State, who, if naturalized, has been 9 years a citizen, who is willing to swear to the Constitution, by what right can the other Senators here say to him and to Pennsylvania: “This man whom you have sent as your representative cannot come in’” Why? “Because he cannot do something which we require him to do.” Has not Pennsylvania a right to ask: “By what warrant do you require him to do this, that, or the other thing? Is it in the Constitution that he shall do these things? If we send men here who have all the constitutional qualifications, where does the right come from to impose others?” But, sir, there were precedents for this. Cromwell, who wanted to have a Parliament to suit himself, administered his oath at the door: “You may come in, gentlemen, to legislate for the Commonwealth of England, but there is one thing you must swear you will not do;” and what is that? “Why, inquire into my power and authority; hands off that.” The French convention undertook to stop at the doors of its halls a certain number of the dele gates and keep them out in order that the remainder might have full control. Was there no danger of usurpation there, of encroachment? Was there no danger when Colonel Pride purged the Long Parliament with a couple of squadrons of dragoons? And this was on the same principle precisely. A majority get in and when they get in they say: ‘We will turn the key and nobody else shall come in.” How are you going to do it? Either keep them out at the doors or put them out if they come in, or build up some new qualification wall that they cannot get over. I should not be at all astonished in the fluctuations of parties to find ten years from this time a wall built up here that every man who would not swear that he had never been an abolitionist, never been a Radical, never been in favor of negro suffrage, should not come in. That might just as well be made as any wall you can build up. You may just as well require a man to swear that at the door as anything else. If you can make him purge himself of his crimes, why can you not of his heresies? That canonical system of laws, however, never was very popular, and I do not think that it ought to be. Then, Mr. President, this bill is against the will of the people of the District, the people who are to be affected by it. And I say further that it is against the will of the American people. I say that wherever this issue was attempted to be started, excepting, perhaps, in the NewEngland States, it was repudiated in the last canvass by the winning party every where, and the proposed amendments to the Constitution were triumphantly pointed to to show that the question of suffrage was still to be left to the States. Negro suffrage was disavowed everywhere south of NewEngland." If so, how can it be said now that this is in accordance with the will of the American people? It could be far better said that it is against their will than that it is in accordance with it. There is another point put by the President, and if I remember aright (because I have not had an opportunity to read the message, and only heard a portion of it imperfectly) that is unan swerable; and I defy the honorable Senfrom Maine, with all hisingenuity, to answer it. How do you undertake to say that it is the will of the American people to establish negro suffrage in the DistCol when it has not been done in Ohio; when it has not been done in Pennsylvania; when it has not been done in NewYork; when it has not been done in the States from which almost all those gentlemen come who are eager for it here? How is that to be answered? If a gentleman representing a State strongly imbued with this sentiment, so strongly that it itself had made it a art of its organic law, came here.; it for the people of the DistCol, ” should pay great heed to his advice and to his counsel; but I do not understand with what face he can come here and propose to saddle this measure upon this population, happening to be at his mercy, when he refuses to inaugu rate it and carry it out at home. If the institutions of the American people are to be taken as expressive of their will, indicative of their wishes in this behalf, I say to the honorable Senator that the great mass of the people are against him and against his scheme. This cannot be disputed. There is no constitution in the Union which has adopted this principle of manhood suffrage; the people of no State in the Union have adopted it; and yet this is said to be desired by the American people. You cannot attribute to the American people, as such, malice, ill will; at least we cannot presume that they intend to inflict, a punishment upon the DistCol rather than confer a benefit upon it. And yet this will be the effect of it, and to no purpose; not to secure the negro; not to give him better laws; not to protect his person; not to protect his liberty any better; not to send him into a court that will be more favorable to him, or to give him any advantage whatever, except to intermeddle with the distribution of taxes raised to clean out gutters and sewers, and to keep the streets in order. Perhaps if he can attain to a majority here and get control of the city he will himself distribute, and distribute as he chooses, the 100fold of taxes that the whites pay into the public Treasury more than he does. That j?". the effect of it. Mr. President, I have only said what I have said because I was unwilling to allow this occasion to go by without replying to the suggestion which has been made here on the floor of the Senate, that the people who are to be affected by legislation in this case have nothing to do with determining the question of its propriety or impropriety. The idea has always been thrown out that this is the place to make experiments. Why make the experiment here more than anywhere else? Do the people of this District belong to the U.S. for all purposes, or for only one purpose? If they do not belong to the U.S. for all purposes, for what particular purpose do they? Is it not that the General Government may be located here, and nothing more? If it is nothing more than that, are they not in all other respects American citizens, like other citizens, entitled to the same rights, entitled to the same protection and the same consideration? Have we a right to tyrannize over these people and to make them do things they do not want to do; make them change their institutions in a fundamental point of view; and why? Not because they want it, but it is rather because they are opposed to it than otherwise. Mr. President, I have no hope that there will be any change in the foreshadowed result in this case; but it is well to know that there are somethings at least which may be said in answer to the criticisms made by honorable Senators upon the message.