CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



165 



of expatriation carries with it the right of citi- 

 zenship of the country where a man goes, but 

 it is equally in violation of the Declaration of 

 Independence and the spirit of the Constitution 

 of the United States. 



" Mr. President, it requires no deduction even 

 from the statement of the honorable Senator 

 from Vermont but only his application to see 

 that his argument involves the right to exclude 

 from this country all the naturalized citizens 

 if Congress sees fit to exercise it. If you may 

 shut the door, you may put outside the person 

 who is here contrary to the interest of the 

 people and without right. Will the honorable 

 Senator from Vermont affirm that if that re- 

 consideration of the relation of the African 

 race to citizenship, which the Senator from 

 Mississippi seems to foreshadow, should ever 

 come, we may rightfully, consistently with the 

 doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, 

 expel persons of the African race from this 

 country and deport them to Liberia ? " 



Mr. Edmunds: "Mr. President, the princi- 

 ple upon which we say in regard to the right 

 to vote that no male citizen shall vote until he 

 is twenty-one years of age if you please, is that 

 it belongs to the body of the people who com- 

 pose the Government to say how political pow- 

 er shall be exercised. Otherwise the people 

 would have no right at all to say that a man of 

 twenty-one should vote ; they would have no 

 right to say anything about it. He had got 

 the natural right at the very moment he was 

 born to vote, at least once ; I will not say how 

 much more often. That doctrine will not 

 stand, Mr. President." 



Mr. Hoar : " May I ask the honorable Sena- 

 tor if he means to affirm that the right in a 

 body-politic to fix twenty-one years or some 

 other limit for coming to the right to vote in 

 its discretion, involves the power to limit al- 

 together the coming to that right to vote of 

 certain races or classes, if it sees fit ? " 



Mr. Edmunds : " I am not speaking of races 

 at all." 



Mr. Hoar : " Classes, then." 



Mr. Edmunds: "I am speaking on this bill 

 of human beings who are not members now of 

 the political community of the United States 

 and who wish to become such, as it is said 

 by my friend from Massachusetts, and that 

 we are perpetrating a great wrong upon them 

 in saying that we are not willing just now 

 that they shall. That is what I am speaking 

 o" 



Mr. Hoar : " If the Senator will pardon me 

 I ought to ask his pardon for interrupting 

 him the Senator took as an illustration of the 

 power the right to fix twenty-one years or 

 some other time as the age for voting, and I 

 desire to understand if he infers from the fact 

 that the public has that right, that it has the 

 right to exclude altogether any class of citizens 

 in the community from voting, because, as I 

 understood, he argued from the right to limit 

 the period of naturalization of foreigners the 



right to exclude them altogether. Now, I say 

 those are very different things." 



Mr. Edmunds: "If I did argue, as I did, 

 from the acknowledged right, as I think it is 

 now admitted even by the Senator from Mas- 

 sachusetts, of the Government of the United 

 States to fix a period for the naturalization of 

 foreigners, I deduce from that the right of the 

 United States to fix that period at ten thousand 

 years if the United States think it is well for 

 the people of the United States to do that thing, 

 and I say also that under the Declaration of In- 

 dependence and the Constitution of the United 

 States, which I still believe in, it is within the 

 competence of Congress, as it has exercised it, 

 always to decide upon receiving into this coun- 

 try as one of its people anybody, to require a 

 test of opinion, as extreme as that may be, be- 

 cause the first naturalization law and the last 

 naturalization law all the time requires that a 

 candidate for admission into the body of the 

 people of this country shall have certain opin- 

 ions that that law defines. These opinions are 

 required to be, very wisely I think, republican, 

 that they shall believe in republican govern- 

 ment as against the domination of emperors 

 and kings. 



"Where do we get the right to test the ad- 

 mission of anybody into this country on the 

 ground of his opinions ? We get it, if we get 

 it at all and I am quite clear that we have it 

 on the fundamental principle I have endeav- 

 ored so often to state, and which my friend 

 from Massachusetts, I do not understand except 

 by the course of his argument plainly to deny, 

 that it is the right of every government, if it 

 be a government, to determine what persons 

 shall come into it from outside of it and be a 

 part of it. If we have not that right, then we 

 have not any right to make a naturalization 

 law at all ; then the moment any foreigner, be 

 he good or bad, be he a saint or a sinner, sets 

 his foot upon the shores of this American Re- 

 public, he has the same rights in every respect 

 that the Senator from Massachusetts and I 

 have. I deny the proposition. All civilized 

 laws everywhere in the whole course of history 

 have denied it, because they have recognized 

 that it was essential to the existence of a gov- 

 ernment, if you had any government at all, 

 that that government, like a family or a part- 

 nership, must receive into it only those persons 

 whom it was willing to receive. It was a com- 

 pact that required the assent of the whole, not 

 of one party but of both. 



" Mr. President, there is one other thing that 

 I disagree with my friend from Massachusetts 

 about, and perhaps that is of no importance to 

 anybody but my friend from Massachusetts and 

 myself ; and that is the New Testament. My 

 friend says that it is the doctrine of the New 

 Testament that it is the right of every man to 

 go everywhere, and to participate with all 

 others in everything that they enjoy, if I cor- 

 rectly understand him. I deny it. By the 

 New Testament, as it is understood in this 



