Mr. JOHNSON. But how? Better in the Union than out of it. If you were not safely in the Union you could not have so well protected yourself and your domestic industry by any power belonging to you as a State. I submit, therefore, upon the general question, that unless it is necessary for the protection of the rights of the citizens constitutin the population of Nebraska that they should have a State government, and not a territorial government, having a population certainly not exceeding 50,000, you should leave them under the latter. And will it be o: said, by my friend who spoke last and y the honorable member from Massachusetts, that the rights, individual and political, under a territorial government? Why, sir, they propose to put ten States under such governments, and they propose it for the very purpose of protection of the citizens in the rights which the Constitution secures. If then, it be true that the rights, political and social and individual, of the citizens may be just as effectually protected under a territorial government, as under a State government, what necessity is there for abolishing the one and establishing the other, unless it be and with all my respect, real and professional, for the honorable member who spoke last, I think that is no ground upon which to place it unless it be a desire to protect a party? The honorable member has thought it proper in the consideration of this bill to animadvert upon the conduct of the POTUS. That is a matter of taste. No one can question the good taste of the honorable member; but I am so dull as not to be able to see that the opinions of the President, past or present, have anything to do with the question whether Nebraska should be received into the Union or not. That is to stand or to fall on its own merits. “Party!” How long will “the party” endure? Are there no elements now which threaten, sooner or later, disruption? Do you all accord in the principles which the party are supposed to adopt? Why, what have we heard upon this floor? The honorable member from Ohio, the particular friend of bill, this and his colleague have both told us, and as I think tol?us properly, that those members of the Senate who voted for the constitutional amendment now before the States for adoption have pledged their faith that when adopted all the States adopting it are to be received into the Union. The honorable memboer from Michigan who has just closed his has told us, if I understand him, that there is no such obligation. My friendfrom Missouri, who offered the particular amendment now before the Senate has told us the same thing; and I may be permitted, without committing any breach of parliamentary decorum, to say that the same doctrine has been maintained by many leading members of the HoRep. Now, suppose it to be adopted, what then? 1/2 of you, and I hope more, will say, “This is all that can be done; the Senators from these States must be admitted.” The other half say “no.” They say “not” possibly because then again would hazard be brought to the continuing existence of the party. Then they may say “I was no party to that pledge; I voted for that amendment, not for the purpose of bringing in the States, but for the purpose of keeping them out; I voted for it because I believed the States would not adopt it, and I was willing therefore to go with those who were in favor of receiving the States if it should be adopted, not because I concurred with them, but because I was fully impressed with the conviction that it would not be adopted, and that not being adopted they would concur with me in keeping them out.” There is ground of separation at once; but there are other grounds. My friendfrom Michigan I think he is right tells the honorable member who offered this amendment and tells the Senate that practically it is of no importance. It professes to be a condition upon which the State of Nebraska will be permitted to come into the Union; but when she does come into the Union, if she comes at all, she "can disregard the condition. As the condition relates to the franchise, he says, and says properly, that the moment the State is in she may get clear of the condition by the exercise of what he says is her admitted power of regulating the franchise for herself. Who concurs of citizens of the U.S. are not safe. with him? All of his party? We know they do not. The mover of the proposition insists that it is not only to be made a condition precedent to the admission of Nebraska into the Union, but a condition to follow the State, at all times thereafter to be inviolate, and out of the power of the State to escape from. I agree with the honorable member from Michigan that that cannot be so, 1st, because, as I have stated, the Union is a Union of equal States; 2nd ly, because as will be seen by those who consult the proceedings of the Convention, and consult those masterly essays which were written by Madison and Jay and Hamilton, recommending the Constitution to the adoption of the American people, it was assumed to be true, (and without that assumption the Constitution never could have been adopted,) that the subject of franchise was to remain with the States just as it remained be. fore the Constitution was adopted, they then living under the Articles of Confederation. Is it to be supposed now, this amendment not being proposed as a constitutional amendment and to operate upon all the States of the Union, but proposed only as applieable to the particu. lar State which asks to be received into the Union; is it to be supposed for a moment that when that State escapes from her infancy, ripens into maturity, contains a population not of 45 or 50,000 but of millions, she will consent to live under the domi nation of a badge to which even the State of Delaware or the State of RhdIsland is not subjected? Suppose she refuses it, she calls a convention and they regulate by their constitution the franchise without regard to this limitation; they admit some to its exercise and exclude others; they admit the white and exclude the black; they require a property qualification or fail to require it; they adopt a constitution according to the opinion which they may entertain upon these particular points. The State is organized, the Governor elected, the members are here representing the State as she was originally created; and are you going to get rid of them, and how? Is there any legal process known to the law by which it can be accomplished, and is there any power which by force of arms or in any other way this body or the POTUS, or all Congress, could attain that end expel from their seats in this body 2 Senators elected by Nebraska and whose terms had not expired; because after their admission that State adopted a constitution disregarding the condition which you had affixed to her admission? Isay no i. would be helpless, helpless in point o aw; and the public judgment would hold that you ought to be helpless, that you had no such power because the exertion of the power would put an end to the equality of the States; that you had no power to impose a condition on Nebraska that was not common to all the States in the Union, and as you had no power to change the constitutions of the other States so as to take from them the rights which belonged to them, because you cannot change by legislation the constitutions of those States, you had no power to make this particular constitution an exception to the general rule. Mr. President, the honorable member the author of this amendment is not to be told that the authority of Congress to affix conditions to the admission of a State is not now for the 1st time called into question. It presented itself in the case of Missouri, and the agitation to which it led threatened at that moment almost the disruption of the Union. It was avoided by a compromise which at the time and almost ever since that time has been attributed to Mr. Clay. He never claimed it for himself, and he was not the author of it. It was avoided by establishing a line on one side of which slavery was expressly prohibited, leaving it to the people of the Territories on the other side to establish it or not as they thought proper., The condition there proposed to be inserted was that slavery should not exist in the State of Missouri. The affirmative of the question as to the power to impose such a condition was argued with very great ability in the HoRep by Mr. Sergeant, a Representative from Pennsylvania, and others, and by Mr. King, then a distinguished member of this body from the State of NewYork, and whose whole career served to add to the reputation of his country both at home and abroad. But in all the debates that have since occurred it has been received as a political maxim growing out of the very nature of our institutions, that these States must be in all respects equal. And in that debate I speak what I think I recollect distinctly it was not pretended that Congress possesseo any authority to impose any other condition than that which i. its seat in a high moral and religious principle, because in their judgment slavery itself was a crime, and it could not be that the Congress of the U.S. would be forced to admit into the Union a State and give it, or without guarding against it, the power to perpetuate a crime a crime in the eye of humanity, a crime in that Higher Eye, a crime in the judgment of one above who sways the harmonious mysteries of the world. But so far as related to any mere political condition, looking to mere measures of policy alone, looking above all others to the question of franchise, there was not a man who engaged in the debate in favor of affixing to the admission of that State into the Union the condition that slavery should not exist, who pretended to maintain the right of affixing any mere political condition which would place the State to be admitted in a condition of inequality with regard to her sisters. Now, let me test the opposite doctrine for a moment and see to what it will lead. As I have stated, and in that I am sure I cannot be contradicted, the States before the Constitution was adopted were all equal; I mean in political rights. When the Constitution was adopted that equality was preserved and all their powers remained just as they were before, and equal with reference to each other as they were before, except so far as they had been delegated to the Government of the U.S. expressly or by fair implication. They have a great many rights, important rights to them as people and as States. No taxes or imposts can be imposed that are not equal everywhere. Every citizen of every State has the same right to resort to the judiciary of the U.S. as any citizen of any other State. The citizens of every State have the same right and the States have the same right to be heard in the Electoral College upon an equal footing with the other States. They have the same right to be represented in the HoRep; they have the same right to be represented in this Chamber; and upon the contingency of there being no popular election of a President and the matter is referred, as the Constitution provides, to the HoRep to determine, in such a contingency each State votes, and votes equally with all other States. Now, which of these rights can you take away? Can you take away the right of being heard in the Electoral College? Nobody will pretend that that can be done by making it a condition of the admission of a State into the Union? Can you provide that they shall not be entitled to the benefit of the equality which the Constitution says shall be preserved in the exercise of the taxing power. Nobody will pretend that. Can you take from them the right to go into the court of the U.S., to be represented in the HoRep, in determining who shall be the POTUS there being failure to decide that question by the popular vote?