tion has
no relation whatever to political rights, that it relates to
something with reference to social equality, something in the far
distance, but does not touch this question at all. When I called
the attention of the Senator from North Carolina to the XV.
Amendment which says "the right of citizens to vote shall not be
denied or abridged," assuming the right to exist, not saying that
the right hereafter shall exist and shall not be abridged; but
the right now existing by fair intendment shall not be abridged,
he replied "that I deduced this right by an inference," and he
thought a right of this kind ought not to stand on mere
inference. His argument for the opposite construction, that the
right to vote may be abridged for any other cause than those
enumerated in the amendment, is drawn only by an inference from
it. The affirmative language is that the right shall not be
abridged for certain causes; and then by an inference the Senator
says it may be abridged for others. In other words, his argument
is that I am not at liberty to infer from the Constitution of the
United States rights for women or rights for mankind. I shall not
extend it by inference in favor of freedom, but any inference
which will limit its operation, which will destroy or curtail its
meaning, is legitimate.

Mr. MERRIMON: What clause of the Constitution does the Senator
assert creates the right?

Mr. SARGENT: The first section of the XV. Amendment declares that
the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged--speaking of it as an affirmative right; not
speaking of it as here established but as a right which of course
must have been established by the XIV. Amendment.

Now, sir, to show that I do not strain the interpretation of the
Constitution, I desire to refer to some few authorities even
under the old Constitution which go very far to answer the
authority that the Senator cited. Bushrod Washington, a member of
the United States Supreme Court, and well known as a jurist of
high attainments and great powers of mind, in the case of
Corfield _vs._ Coryell declared what I shall read, which is
approvingly cited by Kent, the master writer upon American law,
in the second volume of his Commentaries:

It was declared in