and with the expressed objects of the framers of the Constitution and the principles of free government. When the majority of the committee can demonstrate that "the people of the States," and one-half the people of the States, are equivalent terms, or that when the Constitution provides that the Representatives shall be elected by the people, its requirements are met by an election in which less than one-half the adult people are allowed to vote, then it will be admitted that this section to some extent sustains them.
The committee say, that if it had been intended that Congress should prescribe the qualifications of electors, the grant would have given Congress that power specifically. We do not claim that Congress has that power; on the contrary, admit that the States have it; but the section of the Constitution does prescribe who the electors shall be. That is what we claim—nothing more. They shall be "the people;" their qualifications may be regulated by the States; but to the claim of the majority of the committee that they may be "qualified" out of existence, we can not assent.
We are told that the acquiescence by the people, since the adoption of the Constitution, in the denial of political rights to women citizens, and the general understanding that such denial was in conformity with the Constitution, should be taken to settle the construction of that instrument. Any force this argument may have it can only apply to the original text, and not to the XIV. Amendment, which is of but recent date. But, as a general principle, this theory is fallacious. It would stop all political progress; it would put an end to all original thought, and put the people under that tyranny with which the friends of liberty have always had to contend—the tyranny of precedent.
From the beginning, our Government has been right in theory, but wrong in practice. The Constitution, had it been carried out in its true spirit, and its principles enforced, would have stricken the chains from every slave in the republic long since. Yet, for all this, it was but a few years since declared, by the highest judicial tribunal of the republic, that, according to the "general understanding," the black man in this country had no rights the white man was bound to respect. General understanding and acquiescence is a very unsafe rule by which to try questions of constitutional law, and precedents are not infallible guides toward liberty and the rights of man.
Without any law to authorize it, slavery existed in England, and was sustained and perpetuated by popular opinion, universal custom, and the acquiescence of all departments of the government as well as by the subjects of its oppression. A few fearless champions of liberty struggled against the universal sentiment, and contended that, by the laws of England, slavery could not exist in the kingdom; and though for years unable to obtain a hearing in any British court, the Somerset case was finally tried in the Court of King's Bench in 1771, Lord Mansfield presiding, wherein that great and good man, after a long and patient hearing, declared that no law of England allowed or approved of slavery, and discharged the negro. And it was then judicially declared that no slave could breathe upon the soil of England, although slavery had up to that time existed for centuries, under the then existing laws. The laws were right, but the practice and public opinion were wrong.
It is said by the majority of the committee that "if the right of female