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 a
citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State, on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If the
Legislature of the State of New York should require a higher
qualification in a voter for a representative in Congress than is
required for a voter for a member of Assembly, this would, I
conceive, be a violation of a right belonging to one as a citizen
of the United States. That right is in relation to a federal
subject or interest, and is guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution. The inability of a State to abridge the right of
voting on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude, arises from a federal guaranty. Its violation would be
the denial of a federal right--that is, a right belonging to the
claimant as a citizen of the United States.

This right, however, exists by virtue of the XV. Amendment. If
the XV. Amendment had contained the word "sex," the argument of
the defendant would h