4992 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE SYATE. [June 19, 
teration in the relative positions of the state and federal govern- 
ments. There has never been a day since the doctrine of the 
slaughter-house cases was first announced, when any effort to adopt 
anew amendment that would do in unmistakable terms, what the 
proposers of the fourteenth amendment undoubtedly thought they 
had done, namely, give Congress the general power to legislate as 
to the rights and relations of citizens in the states, would have had 
any chance of success. None has ever been seriously proposed. 
The so-called police power will remain with the states while there 
are states, if for no other reason than because, when it is taken 
away, they will be removed. Justice Miller deserves the credit of 
seeing clearly that they would not be states without it. The 
writers, like the author of ‘‘ Political Science and Comparative 
Constitutional Law,’’ who profess regret that this power was not 
held by the court to have been handed over to Congress by the 
fourteenth amendment, certainly do not recognize that what they - 
want transferred is really the whole legislative power of the states. 
Their autonomy would be gone. Their police power is, as Chief 
Justice Marshall conceived it, the remnant of sovereignty left with 
them on the creation of the federal government. ~ 
At the same term with the civil rights cases was decided ex parte 
"Yarborough ef a/., the Ku Klux cases. Jasper Yarborough and 
seven others had been convicted in the northern district of Georgia 
on indictments for conspiring to intimidate on account of his race, 
Berry Saunders, of African descent, in the exercise of his right of 
voting. It was claimed that Congress had no power to provide a 
punishment for this. Justice Miller, however, and the court 
thought otherwise. The right, they said, not to be disturbed be- 
cause of his race in voting is expressly given him by the fifteenth 
amendment and the authority to protect him in that right is as 
plainly given to Congress as is the right to protect the mails and 
the money in them and more so. 
The doctrine of Minor vs. Happersett that no right of suffrage is 
given by the amendment does not do away with the right of Con- 
gress to protect by legislation what is given, so once more we have 
police laws to govern elections passed by Congress and upheld by 
the court. The court, however, does not find it necessary to talk 
about any ‘‘ electoral power ’’ in Congress any more than it did to 
1 710 U. S., 651 (1883). 226) Vaile Lies 
