Let this pretension find place in the Constitution, and the guaranty clause will be restricted in operation.

Of course all attempt to enforce this guaranty against an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color, or against the tyranny of taxation without representation, will be from this time impossible.

In the exercise of a granted power Congress is sole judge of the “means” it employs; and this conclusion is sustained not only by reason, but by the Supreme Court of the United States in solemn judgments.

The citizens you disfranchise were loyal, and some of them poured out their red blood for the Republic; and yet we are asked to intrench this ruling class in the Constitution, so that they can wield unchecked power, while loyal millions…

Is it the citizen who has caused all your woes, and now gnashes his teeth at your triumph,--or is it the citizen who has watched your flag with sympathetic pride, and now rejoices in your triumph?

You cannot say, more than Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” You are your brother’s keeper; and you must see that he is saved from cruel oppression.

And, lastly, I denounce this proposition as a compromise of human rights, the most questionable of any in our history.

The glaring feature of this compromise is the criminal concession, constituting the sacrifice of brave defenders, and even of a whole race, to whom we owe protection.

It will be forgotten, when the monstrous concession looms in history as a landmark of dishonor.

The slave-trade received solemn sanction, and England pocketed the dishonest profits,--just as now a kindred offence on a grander scale is to receive solemn sanction, and we who sanction it are to pocket the profits in political power.

Do not talk, Sir, of this measure as “punitive,” unless you mean that it is punitive of benefactors,--for this is the only character it can bear in history.

It is my duty now to remind you that you go further than Pontius Pilate.

Has not the Saviour himself told us that what we do to the least we do to Him?

Ay, Sir, in offering fellow-citizens to be sacrificed, in betraying them for less than “thirty” Representatives in Congress, and in appropriating their political raiment, you do all this to the Saviour himself.

I speak for my country, which I seek to save from dishonor; I speak for fellow-citizens whom I would save from outrage; and I speak for that public faith and public security in which is bound up the welfare of all.

To this I answer, Reject at once the pretended Amendment; show it no favor; give it no quarter.

Thus, while proposing to found representation on voters, I at the same time asserted the power of Congress under the Constitution to secure equality in political rights.

The alleged inequality in operation, owing to excess of females over males in certain States, may make you hesitate; but better take representation founded on voters, even with any such alleged inequality, than do a grievous wrong.

Representative government is an invention of modern times.

Athens was a democracy where the people met in public assembly for the government of the state: there was no representative body chosen by the people for this purpose.

If, then, the representative body is a substitute for the people themselves meeting in primary assemblies, it would seem that it must be founded upon the people who compose the primary assemblies,--in other words, upon legal voters.

Its adoption would at least give symmetry to our national system, and make the representative more precisely the embodied presence of his constituents, while at the same time it would tend to enlarge the suffrage, and to harmonize…

If representation were founded on voters, the States would care little, if Congress should annul all inequality in the elective franchise on account of color.

Speaking in the name of national justice and for the national safety, they cannot be put aside with indifference; nor is it wise to say that any measure of justice is not practical.

A Constitutional Amendment placing equality of political rights under the safeguard of a specific text may be superfluous, but it is not unconstitutional or immoral.