Mr. SHELLABARGER. Now, Mr. Speaker, I will state, in answer to that question, that a very proper provision in a law upon this subject, to execution of the power for which I am contending, Would be to provide by law that wherever one who, coming up arently within the dese rition of those rose ried, claimed to be entitle to exerciset c prohibited right he should be permitted to establish his right by proofs. Now, then, I go on with my argument; and the gentleman will see as I proceed how unimportant are the suggestions he makes. The power of these States to pass these laws forfeiting the right to vote, and these other rights, was, I believe, never disputed in this discussion with Mr. Jefferson by the British Government. Many of these laws were long after the treaty. By both the British and American interpretation of that treaty they who were in the U.S. atits date, and who adhered to our Government, thereby became citizens of the U.S. These acts of the State Legislatures, e ccially that touching Shayss rebellion, turne them into disfranchtsed men who never adhered to any foreign Government, never were out of the U.S., and who, but for these laws, would have been citizens of the U.S and yet some of these laws, without any trial or conviction, forever disfranchised them. Some of these laws punished particular individuals by name for specified offenses. These were acts of attainder or of pains and penalties, and such the U.S. may not now, owing to an express constitutional revision, pass. But such as provided generally for forfeiting citizenship where men had renounced their allegiance, were not bills of attainder, are not prohibited by our Constitution, and are a most ordinary and just exercise of a sovereign power which was and is conceded by all our history to have been possessed by ever one of the colonies and shall it be endure now, that this great nation shall hold less power over national allegiance when it is voluntarily discarded by a traitor than these colonies had?