distinct, was held in the Slaughter-house Cases recently decided by the United States Supreme Court at Washington.
The rights of citizens of the State, as such, are not under consideration in the XIV. Amendment. They stand as they did before the adoption of the XIV. Amendment, and are fully guaranteed by other provisions. The rights of citizens of the States have been the subject of judicial decision on more than one occasion. (Corfield agt. Coryell, 4 Wash. C. C. R., 371. Ward agt. Maryland, 12 Wall., 430. Paul agt. Virginia, 8 Wall., 140.) These are the fundamental privileges and immunities belonging of right to the citizens of all free governments, such as the right of life and liberty; the right to acquire and possess property, to transact business, to pursue happiness in his own manner, subject to such restraint as the Government may adjudge to be necessary for the general good. In Cromwell agt. Nevada, 6 Wallace, 36, is found a statement of some of the rights of a citizen of the United States, viz:
To come to the seat of the Government to assert any claim he may have upon the Government, to transact any business he may have with it; to seek its protection; to share its offices; to engage in administering its functions. He has the right of free access to its seaports through which all operations of foreign commerce are conducted, to the sub-treasuries, land offices, and courts of justice in the several States.
Another privilege of a citizen of the United States, says Miller, Justice, in the "Slaughter-house" cases, is to demand the care and protection of the Federal Government over his life, liberty, and property when on the high seas or within the jurisdiction of a foreign government. The right to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, he says, are rights of the citizen guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.
The right of voting, or the privilege of voting, is a right or privilege arising under the Constitution of the State, and not of the United States. The qualifications are different in the different States. Citizenship, age, sex, residence, are variously required in the different States, or may be so. If the right belongs to any particular person, it is because such person is entitled to it by the laws of the State where he offers to exercise it, and not because of citizenship of the United States. If the State of New York should provide that no person should vote until he had reached the age of thirty-one years, or after he had reached the age of fifty, or that no person having gray hair, or who had not the use of all his limbs, should be entitled to vote, I do not see how it could be held to be a violation of any right derived or held under the Constitution of the United States. We might say that such regulations were unjust, tyrannical, unfit for the regulation of an intelligent State; but if rights of a citizen are thereby violated, they are of that fundamental class derived from his position as a citizen of the State, and not those limited rights belonging to him as a citizen of the United States, and such was the decision in Corfield agt. Coryell, supra.
The United States rights appertaining to this subject are those first under article 1, paragraph 2, of the United States Constitution, which provides that electors of Representatives in Congress shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature, and second, under the XV. Amendment, which provides that the right of