CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



149 



ereign in that regard, because she is entirely 

 master of the subject; and where the govern- 

 ment of the United States regulates a subject 

 without State interference at all, that Govern- 

 ment is entirely sovereign over that subject; 

 as sovereign as any Government can be over 

 any subject whatever. 



" Now, sir, it is of the very essence of the 

 relations between the States and the General 

 Government that the States shall retain the 

 control of a large class of subjects. All ques- 

 tions of a domestic sort, the regulation of prop- 

 erty, the descent of estates, the courts that 

 regulate sucli questions these are exclusively 

 within the control of the States ; their regula- 

 tion requires that the State shall have a Legis- 

 lature, that it shall make laws ; and, if it make 

 laws as an independent and sovereign State 

 over these subjects, it must have the control 

 and selection of the law -makers. And, if you 

 take away from the State the power to select 

 the law-makers, you take away from the State 

 the control of the subjects that the laws may 

 operate upon. So, when the Constitution of 

 the United States takes away from the State 

 the control over the subject of suffrage, it takes 

 away from the State the control of her own 

 laws upon a subject that the Constitution of 

 the United States intended she should be sov- 

 ereign upon. But I have said more upon this 

 question than I intended to do. 



" Now, Mr. President, if it were the pleasure 

 of Congress to change tfye Constitution upon a 

 subject so important as this, ought it not to be 

 clear and beyond all doubt that it would result 

 in public good ? I know there are very many 

 distinguished men in the Republican party who 

 have recently expressed the opinion that uni- 

 versal suffrage would be an evil; that these 

 colored people, just come out of a condition of 

 slavery, were not qualified to exercise the suf- 

 frage for the good of the public. 



" I have not been satisfied, as many gentle- 

 men of the Republican party recently were 

 not satisfied, that it is wise to extend the suf- 

 frage to the colored people. If any State 

 chooses to do it under the existing Constitu- 

 tion, it is her own right to do so. I make no 

 war upon that. That is right, because it is in 

 the sense of the Constitution right, the State 

 having the power to do so. But I am not 

 satisfied, I never have been satisfied, that it is 

 wise to make suffrage universal so as to include 

 that race; and I think upon this subject there 

 are some Senators in this Hall who are going 

 to vote for this amendment who will agree 

 with me. I will come to that directly. 



" Some Senator this evening said that intel- 

 ligence* and virtue were essential to the safe 

 exercise of the suffrage. I think that race does 

 not now bring to the mass of the intelligence 

 of this country an addition. I do not think it 

 ever will. That race in its whole history has 

 furnished no evidence of its capacity to lift it- 

 self up. It has never laid the foundation for 

 its own civilization. Any elevation that we 



find in that race is when we find it coming in 

 contact with the white race. The influence of 

 the white race upon the colored man has car- 

 ried him up somewhat in the scale of civiliza- 

 tion, but when dependent upon himself he has 

 never gone upward. I 4 am willing that that 

 shall be tested by the history and experience 

 of two thousand years back. "While the ten- 

 dency of the white race is upward, the ten- 

 dency of the colored race is downward ; and I 

 have always supposed it is because in that race 

 the physical predominates over the moral and 

 intellectual qualities. I may be mistaken in 

 that ; I will not undertake to say that that is 

 certainly so. But I believe that the tendency 

 of that race is downward when not supported 

 by the intelligence of the white race. 



" There are some Senators here who do not 

 want the Chinese to vote. The Senators from 

 Oregon and California, I think, are all opposed 

 to the Chinese voting ; and I think the Senator 

 from Nevada (Mr. Stewart) is ; and why ? I 

 believe they said they were pagans ; but they 

 are not such pagans as we find in Africa. 

 China is the original home of a civilization 

 that the world honors to this day. Why, sir, 

 in China they had many of the rare and useful 

 inventions long before they were known in 

 Europe. It is said that gunpowder was known 

 in China before it was in Europe." 



Mr. Edmunds: " And printing." 



Mr. Hendricks : " Yes ; it is said that print- 

 ing in a rude form was known there ; and the 

 compass was in use there ; 'and one of their 

 great writers is as immortal as the classics of 

 Athens, with a morality that comes nearer the 

 morality of Jesus Christ than that of any an- 

 cient writer. But these Chinese, who are 

 capable of a very high civilization, who have 

 sustained their own civilization, to some extent 

 at least, if they come to our country are not 

 to be voters. They are in the way, I suppose, 

 of the State of Nevada and of party hopes in 

 California ; I do not know why. Are they not 

 prepared to give as intelligent a vote as the 

 negro ? Do they not understand our form of 

 government as well as the negro ? Are they 

 not likely to become as well informed ? 



" But the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. 

 Frelinghuysen) puts their exclusion upon the 

 ground of their religion, that they are pagans. 

 Is it the business of this Government to pre- 

 scribe what God or in what form men shall 

 worship? He says that we are a Christian 

 people. Not altogether, sir. "We have no such 

 test as that. It is not a test that obtains in 

 any of the States now that a man shall be a 

 Christian in order to be a voter. In the Sen- 

 ator's own State the Jew, a man who is not 

 a Christian, is a voter. The Jew, who does 

 not believe in the Saviour that the Senator 

 and I believe in, is a voter still. You do not 

 exclude him because he is not a Christian ; you 

 do not exclude the infidel, who recognizes no 

 God at all." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen : " May I ask the Senator 



