f some of the ablest
lawyers and best men of the country, I procured a judicial
definition of these terms, "privileges, and immunities," although
Mr. Attorney Bates said none exists, and my friend Judge Paschal,
a more learned man, repeated it. I referred them to the case of
Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4th vol. of the so-called "Washington
Circuit Court Reports," p. 371, where these terms came up, away
back in the old time. Bushrod Washington, the favorite nephew of
our Washington, made the decision, ladies. He was the Washington
who got all of the brains of the family outside of its great
chief; and he put them to a most admirable use. He was one of the
judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, and he
judicially defined the meaning of these "privileges and
immunities," and said that they included such privileges as are
fundamental in their nature. And among them he says, is the right
to EXERCISE THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE, and to HOLD OFFICES, as
provided for by the laws of the various States. And the great
Chancellor Kent, quoting this case, thus approvingly incorporates
its very language into his text, where it stands unchallenged,
unquestioned, and uncontradicted.

"It was declared in Corfield _vs._ Coryell, that the
privileges and immunities conceded by the Constitution of
the United States to citizens in the several States, were to
be confined to those which were in their nature fundamental,
and belonged of right to the citizens of all free
governments. Such are the rights of protection of life and
liberty, and to acquire and enjoy property, and to pay no
higher impositions than other citizens, and to pass through
or reside in the State at pleasure, and _to enjoy the
elective franchise according_ to the regulations of the law
of the State" (2 Kent Com., p. 71).

Why, the gentlemen of the Upper and of the Lower House, who are
familiar with that decision and with its canonization by Kent,
are not obliged to resort to Webster (not Daniel) and Worcester,
nor to Grant White, nor even to Bouvier's Law Dictionary. They
may overrule them all if they will. But they must go back to
these sometimes forgotten decisions, which rest in the leaves of
these dusty volumes, to these witnesses o