d from California [Mr. Higby] has informed us that there are
one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the United States
in the State of Mississippi to-day than there are of white citizens;
that there are one hundred thousand more free colored citizens of the
United States in South Carolina than there are of white citizens; and
then we are gravely told that we must not press this amendment,
because we are abandoning the Constitution and the intent of our
fathers. That is a new discovery, one for which the Democracy ought to
take out letters patent, that it was ever intended that a minority of
free citizens should disfranchise the majority of free male citizens,
of full age, in any State of the Union! For myself, I will never
consent to it."

In answer to the objection that the proviso in the proposed amendment
seemed to acknowledge the right to deny or abridge the elective
franchise on account of race or color, Mr. Bingham said: "I beg the
gentleman to consider that a grant of power by implication can not be
raised by a law which only imposes a penalty, and nothing but a
penalty, for a non-performance of a duty or the violation of a right.
Within the last hundred years, in no country where the common law
obtains, I venture to say, has any implication of a grant of power
ever been held to be raised by such a law, and especially an implied
power, to do an act expressly prohibited by the same law. The
guarantee of your Constitution, that the people shall elect their
Representatives in the several States, can not be set aside or
impaired by inserting in your Constitution, as a penalty for
disregarding it, the provision that the majority of a State that
denies the equal rights of the minority shall suffer a loss of
political power.

"I have endeavored to show that the words of the Constitution, the
people of 'the States shall choose their Representatives,' is an
express guarantee that a majority of the free male citizens of the
United States in every State of this Union, being of full age, shall
have the political power subject to the equal right of suffrage in the
minority of free male citizens of full age. There is a further
guarantee in the Constitution of a republican form of government to
every State, which I take to mean that the majority of the free male
citizens in every State shall have the political power. I submit to my
friend that this proviso is nothing but a penalty for a violation on
the part of th