Mr. JOHNSON. As I stated yesterday, I rise with no view to discuss the merits of the measure itself to which the proposition upon the table is offered as an amendment. My opinion upon that measure and the reason on which it rests was stated to the Senate when the subject was under discussion at an earlier day of the session. I rise merely to discuss the question which as I suppose the particular amendment now before the Senate presents. The honorable member who proposed it [Mr. EDMUNDs] has stated the ground upon which he thinks we have the authority to adopt it. As in my view that ground is not only wholly untenable, but is positively mischievous, I desire as well as I may be able to state the considerations which lead me to that conclusion. The ground taken by the honorable member from Vermont is this: as Nebraska is now a Territory and subject to the jurisdiction of Congress, either under the clause of the constitution which gives to Congress the authority to pass rules. i regulations in relation to the disposal of the public property, or because of the implied power that the possession of a ritoryter involves necessarily the right to govern it, he maintains that we are at liberty to keep the Territory in the condition in which it now is, and govern it at all times hereafter as long as we may think proper so to govern it as a Territory; and, being under no obligation to admit it as a State, we are at liberty, if we are asked to admit it, to impose any condition upon that admission which we may think proper. The error of that doctrine consists, I think in not understanding correctly the purpose o the clause in the Constitution which gives to Congress the authority to admit new States. It has never that I am aware of been maintained until now, if it is now maintained by my friendfrom Vermont, that under that authority Congress has any right to form a constitution for the people of a Territory who may desire to come in as a State; and if he be in error, it consists in confounding 2 things that, in my judgment, are clearly distinct. The power which we have is to admit new States, that is all, and the extent of that power which is implied in the authority to admit is to be ascertained by recurring to the subject to which it is made applicable, to the thing which is to occur if the power is exerted. The subject to which the term applies in express language is a State, not in the general acceptance of the term, not in the sense in which that term may be under stood elsewhere than in the U.S., not in the sense in which it may be understood geographically, but in the sense in which, when admitted, it is to become one of the States of the U.S.; and one would suppose, when the authority is to admit a State into the existing Union of States, that the sole purpose of the Constitution was to give to Congress the authority to bring into the Union a State not within it before, but partaking precisely of all the characteristics and possessing all the powers and having all the rights that characterize and are possessed by the States that were in the Union when the Constitution was ratified. The question then is, what is a State admitted after the ratification of the States by the s o fo original 13 2. What must it be? It is a State required only, so far as the Constitution prescribes anything in relation to its character, to be republican in point of form. That form being possessed, then the only other qualification, if qualification it can be called, is that it is in all respects to possess all the powers and all the rights that belong to the original States. If it was otherwise we should have composing the States of the Union gross inequalities; some States would possess rights, political rights and civil rights, that would not be possessed by other States. Instead of constituting a harmonious whole there would be anything but harmony, so far as harmony is to be conferred or is to result from the unity of the States each with the other. But there is another reason which I submit to my friendfrom Vermont. If he is right, it would follow that the amendment to the constitution which received the unanimous sanction of the people of the several original States would. practically of no importance to the new States: I mean the amendment, without the anticipated adoption of which we have every reason to believe the Constitution never would have been ratified, which says that all powers not delegated to the U.S. are reserved to the States or the people of the States. Now, I suppose it will hardly be denied that every State in the Union, irre spective of the time when she becomes a State of the Union, is equally entitled to the protection which that amendment was intended to confer upon the States. I suppose that the State of Vermont, for example, although I believe not a State in the Union when that amendment was adopted, has now all the rights as a State, and her citizens have all the rights as citizens under that clause, that Maryland and her citizens have under the same clause. I am sure the honorable member from Wer mont will not be heard to contest that. If, then, the reservation clause applies to the new States as well as to the original 13, the question is, what were the rights delegated to the Government of the U.S.; or, to make myself more easily understood, what were the powers conferred upon the Congress of the U.S. of a legislative character by the Constitution? The moment we ascertain the extent of those powers, as no other dept of the Government is clothed with any legislative power, we of the ascertain the extent reservation clause to be found in the amendment; and we therefore necessarily reach the conclusion that if Congress has not the particular power which may be disputed in any instance, it is because it is not delegated; and we come necessarily to the conclusion that because it is not delegated it belongs to the States as contradistinguished from the Congress. Then, Mr. President, in the logical arrangement of the argument, which nobody better comprehends than my friendfrom Vermont his mind and his profession have made him isstr, ictly logical the next question that arises is the right which this amendment deals with a odelegated to Congress? for, as I have said, if it is not, it is a right possessed by the States; and if Nebraska, when she comes into the Union, will be entitled to the whole extent of the authority reserved under the amendment, then Nebraska will be made to surrender, if she can do it, or rather we attempt to force upon her a surrender of a right which the reserved clause secures to her. Then, Mr. President, has Congress any authority over the subject to which the amend mend applies? I have not as yet heard any argument, I was about to say any plausible ground, upon which such a proposition has been maintained. I do not know that it has been maintained at all, except I believe by my friendfrom Massachusetts, [Mr. SUMNER, and that only because the regulation of the suffrage is material in order to the proper discharge of obligation to guaranty a RFG, and 2nd ly, "because that regulation is involved impliedly, if not express. edly, in one of the resolutions accompanying the amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery. I do not propose to discuss the question now. I assume that over the right of suffrage in the States Congress has no power. I say I decline to discuss it, and will content myself with stating very briefly, the simple grounds upon which, I think, that proposition rests. In the 1st place, there is nothing in the Constitution which in terms gives to Congress any such power. In the 2nd place, the clause which confers upon Congress all its powers confers only such as are there delegated. n the 3rd place, the only provision in the Constitution which relates to elections at all relates exclusively to the election of members of Congress and of Senators of the several States, and in relation to the 1st the provision is that they are to be elected by the people of the several States who are by the laws of the several States or the constitutions of the several States to be the constituents of the members of their House of Delegates, or their popular assembly, whatever that may be called. So there is not only the absence of any express authority to interfere with the right of suffrage in the States, but there is a [. clear imof the absence of any such purpose y incorporating into the Constitution a provision that the electors of the members of congress are to have the qualifications required for the electors of the popular branch of each State Legislature; and nobody has ever pretended that Congress can prescribe the of the voters in State elections for State officers. But my friendfrom Vermont says and he will pardon me for saying that as I view it his proposition is entirely novel, not sanctioned. the precedents to which he has adverted when they come to be distinctly understood that as we have the authority to admit, and are not compelled to admit, we may, with the assent of the State which is to be admitted, prescribe just such conditions as we think proper. Where does that lead us? if I am right in saying that over the question of suffrage congress has no power, it is because over that question the States have the exclusive power; it is because the Constitution of the U.S. never intended to interfere with that 'power at all as it was originally framed; and because the people of the U.S. recently, after the adoption of the Constitution by a sufficient number of States and the organization of the Government, passed the amendment to which I have referred, expressly leaving with the States, as a right, everything which was not delegated by the Constitution of the U.S. to the Gene ral Government. But it is said you may impose a condition. Let us see where that will lead us logically, or, to use the language of the books, what is the logical sequence of that proposition? Any condition may be made a fundamental condition of the admission of the State, irrespective of the inquiry whether the subject to which the condition refers is one over which the States were intended to have exclusive authority, and consequently irrespective of the question as to what the nature of that condition may be in its operation upon the power of the State. This amendment deals with suffrage; but the States have the same authority over the question of suffrage that they have over every subject submitted to their jurisdiction by the Constitution, or reserved for their jurisdiction by the Constitution, not parted with by themselves, over the laws of contract of every description, the laws of marriage, the laws of divorce, the manner in which conveyances of real estate are to be executed and acknowledged, the civil and the criminal code. Every particular to which the power of the States was supposed to extend may be, if the honorable member is right, taken away as regards new States by attaching to the act for their admission into the Union a fundamental condition that such rights are not thereafter to be exercised. But it is not only true in relation to all the rights which belong to the States, because not transferred to the U.S.; it is equally true of the particular right conferred upon a State by the Constitution itself. Every State is to have 2 Senators upon this floor. That right is no more secured to a State than is the right to legislate exclusively upon the subjects to which I have alluded. hey stand precisely upon the same ground the authority of the Constitution; in the one case because of the reservation of the power to the States; in the other case because of the express delegation of the particular power to the people of the State of being represented upon this floor. Now, will my honorable friend assert that we could in the act for the admission of Nebraska say that it is to be considered as a fundamental condition of the act admitting her that at no time shall Nebraska have more than one Senator or have any Senator?