CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



169 



u What is it to be a citizen of the United 

 States, if, being that, the citizen cannot be pro- 

 tected in those fundamental privileges and im- 

 munities which inhere in the very nature of 

 citizenship ? And there is the fault into which 

 my honorable friends on the other side have 

 fallen in arguing this constitutional question. 

 The question is not whether citizens of a par- 

 ticular character, either as to color or religion 

 or race, shall exercise certain functions ; but 

 the question is the other way. It is that 

 no citizen shall be deprived of whatever be- 

 longs to him in his character as a citizen; and 

 what belongs to a man in his character as a 

 citizen has been long in a great many respects 

 well understood. There was the old Constitu- 

 tion, the fourth article, you remember, which 

 said that citizens of each State should be en- 

 titled to the privileges and immunities of citi- 

 zens of the several States. What did that 

 mean? That has received judicial interpreta- 

 tion. 



"By common consent of all parties, before 

 this gravest question arising out of the rebel- 

 lion and the war has been forced upon us, the 

 courts had held with universal acceptance, I 

 believe, that there did belong to citizens cer- 

 tain inherent rights -which could not be de- 

 nied to them, and that you could not, under 

 the Constitution of the United States, either 

 through State or other authority, set up dis- 

 tinctions which interfered with these funda- 

 mental privileges. Perfectly consistent with 



and distinction upon arbitrary reasons, that 

 exist in favor of all others. That is what it is. 

 Then apply it to this bill, and what have you ? 

 You say it shall not be competent for any per- 

 son, either under the authority of a State or 

 without it, to exclude from modes of public 

 travel persons on the ground- that they have 

 come from Germany, like my distinguished 

 friend behind me (Mr. Schurz), or that they 

 have come from Ireland, as some other Sena- 

 tors here may have come, or that their descent 

 is traced from Ham or Shem or Japhet. And 

 yet Senators seem to be greatly alarmed when 

 this simple proposition of common right inher- 

 ent in everybody is put into a statute-book, 

 which carries out a Constitution which declares 

 that every privilege and every immunity of an 

 American citizen shall be sacred and protected 

 by the power of the nation. That is all there 

 is to it ; and those, therefore, who go fishing 

 and talking dialectics about attorneys and 

 about slaughter-house cases and police regula- 

 tions find themselves entirely wide of the mark. 

 The real thing, Mr. President, is that there lies 

 in this Constitution, just as in Magnet, Charta, 

 and as in the bills of rights of all the States, a 

 series of declarations that the rights of citizens 

 shall not be invaded. These bills of rights do 

 not say that A or B or or any class shall 

 hold an office or be a witness or a juryman or 

 walk the streets. They only say that these 

 common rights, which belong necessarily to all 

 men alike in the reason of things, shall not be 



must conform to certain qualifications. Your 

 courts may say a case which seems to have 

 troubled my honorable friend from Wisconsin 

 (Mr. Carpenter) very much your courts may 

 say, be they Federal or be they State, that in 

 order to practise law every citizen must possess 

 certain qualifications of sex, of age, of learn- 

 ing, or experience, or whatever ; but what has 

 that to do with the question ? Unless you can 

 say that it is a fundamental right of a citizen 

 to be a lawyer, you do not get ahead in the 

 argument at all ; but yet every one who is ac- 

 quainted with constitutional history knows that 

 it never has been contended that a fundamen- 

 tal right of a citizen was to be a lawyer or a 

 schoolmaster or a judge or a Senator. The 

 only thing that the Constitution says is that 

 there shall never be a distinction in respect to 

 the rights which belong to a citizen in his in- 

 herent character as such. Now, what are 

 those rights ? Common rights as the common 

 lawyers used to say, common rights as the 

 courts of the United States have said under the 

 fourth article. Among those may be enumer- 

 ated it may be that you cannot make a pre- 

 cise definition, but you can always tell, when 

 you name an instance, whether it falls within 

 or without it the right to go peaceably in the 

 public streets, the right to enjoy the same priv- 

 - and immunities, without qualification 



question 

 the passage of the bill." 



The result was announced as follows : 



YEAS Messrs. Alcorn, Allison, Anthony, Bore- 

 man, Boutwell, Cameron, Chandler, Clayton, Conk- 

 ling, Conover, Cragin, Edmunds, Ferry of Michigan, 

 Flanagan, Frelinghuysen, Harvey, Howe, Ingalls, 

 Jones, Logan, Mitchell, Morrill of Vermont, Morton, 

 Oglesby, Patterson, Pease, Pratt, Kamsey, Robert- 

 son, Sargent, Scott, Sherman, Spencer, Stewart, 

 Washburn, West, Windom, and Wright 38. 



NAYS Messrs. Bayard, Bogy, Carpenter, Cooper, 

 Davis, Dsnnis, Eaton, Ferry of Connecticut, Gold- 

 thwaite, Gordon, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland, Ham- 

 ilton of Texas, Kelly, Lewis, McCreery, Merrimon, 

 Norwood, Kansom, Saulsbury Schurz, Sprague, Ste- 

 venson, Stockton, Thurman, and Tipton 26. 



ABSENT Messrs. Brownlow, Dorsey, Fenton, Gil- 

 bert, Hamlin, Hitchcock, Johnston, Morrill of Maine, 

 and Wadleigh 9. 



So the bill was passed. 



In the House, on December 17th, the appro- 

 priation bill to defray the expenses of the Gov- 

 ernment being under consideration, the Clerk 

 read as follows : 



For the Commissioner of Education, $3,000 ; chief 

 clerk, $2,000; one clerk of class four; one statisti- 

 cian, with the compensation of a clerk of class four; 

 one clerk of class three; one translator, with the 

 compensation of a clerk of class three ; one clerk of 

 class two ; four copyists, at $900 each ; one mes- 

 senger, $840 ; and one watchman; in all, $18,360. 



Mr. Monroe, of Ohio, said : " I wish to move 



