CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



219 



fundamental righN to any greater degree than 

 it diil Hpiin.-t u ciii/.-ii i>t' its own State, of the 

 same class, s.> now no Stato must discriminate 

 against a citizen of the United States merely 

 on acr<'imt ft' his race." 



Mr. 'I 'liiinium, t.t' Ohio, gaid: "I do not be- 

 lifvt- that there is one-third of the Senate 

 who, untnunoieled by any outside pressure or 

 anv intrinsic consideration, would be found to 

 \..te 1'or it. I think I am very liberal in sup- 

 posing that even a third of the Senate would, 

 if uutrammeled, give it their support. But 

 are about eight hundred thousand col- 

 .ii-nl \dters in the United States, and they are 

 tial to the maintenance of the power of 

 the Republican party, and their demands, or 

 what are supposed to be their demands, have 

 more power in this Chamber than the Consti- 

 tution of the country or the welfare of the 

 c'lured race itself. That is the trouble, sir ; 

 that is what produces all the trouble we have 

 about this matter. If this question were to 

 be decided solely by the provisions in the 

 Constitution, notwithstanding the bold and 

 unqualified language of the Senator from In- 

 diana (Mr. Pratt), notwithstanding his bold 

 and positive assertions, I, humble as I am, 

 would venture to achieve in this Senate such 

 a victory over his constitutional interpretation 

 as would settle that question at least in this 

 body. Furthermore, if the fate of this meas- 

 ure were to be determined by its intrinsic 

 merits, by its' policy or impolicy, it would re- 

 quire but very little ability to show that it 

 ought never to pass. And yet further, if its 

 fate were to be determined by the interest of 

 the colored race, there is nothing more capable 

 of demonstration than that the very best inter- 

 ests of that race require that it should be defeat- 

 ed. And again, if its adoption or rejection de- 

 pended upon principles of eternal justice rec- 

 ognized in all civilized communities, its rejec- 

 tion would be certain. 



"I do not know but that it is considered 

 almost ridiculous here to speak of the princi- 

 ples that once were universally admitted in 

 regard to this Government and in regard to 

 our Constitution. There was a time when no 

 human being in the United States, of whatever 

 political party, denied the proposition that the 

 Government of the United States is a govern- 

 ment of delegated powers, and that it possess- 

 es no powers but such as are expressly con- 

 ferred upon jt by the Constitution, or such as 

 result by necessary implication from those 

 which are thus expressly conferred. I say 

 there was a time when no man in all the 

 length and breadth of this land disputed that 

 proposition ; and perhaps there are very few 

 now who openly deny it ; and yet in practice 

 it is utterly disregarded, and instead of that 

 a wholly different mode of interpreting the 

 Constitution and powers of this Government 

 has acquired complete dominion in its legisla- 

 tive department. The old doctrine, which 

 had the sanction not only of the fathers of the 



Constitution, but of nearly three generations 

 after them, has come to be totally supplanted 

 in practice by the dogma that Congress may 

 d-i whatever it is not expressly forbidden to 

 do in the Constitution ; so that, instead of the 

 old doctrine that where you cannot find a 

 delegated power, the power does not exist, 

 the theory upon which Congress now acts is 

 that it may exercise every power of Govern- 

 ment whether it can be found in the Constitu- 

 tion or not, unless it is expressly prohibited. 

 Upon no other foundation whatsoever can 

 much of the legislation of the last eight or 

 nine years be maintained for a moment. And 

 I regret to say, Mr. President, that not only 

 here, but in a judicial tribunal that I need not 

 name, this doctrine has the apparent sanction 

 of one of its most distinguished judges. A 

 doctrine from which Marshall himself, strong 

 as he was in his devotion to Federal power, 

 would have shrunk in horror, is now avowed 

 in effect, not in the seat that he occupied, but 

 so close to it that it cannot but excite remark. 



"Now, sir, what is the Constitution of the 

 United States? It consists of certain delega- 

 tions of power to the Federal Government ap- 

 portioned among the departments of that Gov- 

 ernment, and of certain prohibitions. It is 

 thus affirmative in its provisions and negative 

 in its provisions. It grants power to the Gov- 

 ernment and to the several departments there- 

 of, and then it contains prohibitions for the 

 greater security of the States and of the peo- 

 ple ; prohibitions against the exercise of power 

 by the Federal Government. Those prohibi- 

 tions are to be found especially in the ninth 

 section of the first article and in the first eight 

 amendments. Then it contains another set 

 of prohibitions upon the powers of the States, 

 and those prohibitions are in every instance 

 prohibitions upon the States as States ; not 

 prohibitions upon individuals, but prohibitions 

 upon the States in their sovereign capacity as 

 States. 



" In the course of time the people proceeded 

 to further amend the Constitution by articles 

 thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, and now I ask 

 the particular attention of the Senate to what 

 the prohibitions in these articles are in order 

 to show that they are precisely of the same 

 nature as the prohibitions in the original Consti- 

 tution and in the first eight amendments there- 

 of ; prohibitions some of them upon the Federal 

 Government as a Government, and the others 

 prohibitions upon the States as sovereign States, 

 and nothing else, nowhere prohibitions upon 

 individuals as individuals, nowhere treating 

 individuals as mere members of the commu- 

 nity, but everywhere, in every line and sentence 

 of the amendments, treating the States as cor- 

 porations, as sovereign States, and acting upon 

 them as States, and treating the Federal Gov- 

 ernment in its sphere as a sovereign Govern- 

 ment, and acting upon it in its sovereign 

 capacity. What is the thirteenth article of 

 amendment ? 



