e act which is to be
considered declares, that no person shall vote at the
election for delegates to said convention who will not, if
duly challenged, take and subscribe an oath that he has not
done certain acts mentioned therein, and inflicts the
penalty of political disfranchisement without any
preliminary examination or trial, for a refusal to take said
oath.

By this enactment the citizen is deprived, upon declining to
conform to its mandate, of a right guaranteed to him by the
Constitution and laws of the land, and one of the most
inestimable and invaluable privileges of a free government.
There can be no doubt, I think, that to deprive a citizen of
the privileges of exercising the elective franchise, for any
conduct of which he has previously been guilty, is to
inflict a punishment for the act done.

It imposes upon him a severe penalty, which interferes with
his privileges as a citizen, affects his respectability and
standing in the community, degrades him in the estimation of
his fellow-men, and reduces him below the level of those who
constitute the great body of the people of which the
Government is composed. It moreover inflicts a penalty
which, by the laws of this State, is a part of the
punishment inflicted for a felony, and which follows
conviction for such a crime. It is one of the peculiar
characteristics of our free institutions, that every citizen
is permitted to enjoy certain rights and privileges, which
place him upon an equality with his neighbors. Any law which
takes away or abridges these rights, or suspends their
exercise, is not only an infringement upon their enjoyment,
but an actual punishment. That such is the practical effect
of the test oath required by the act in question, can admit
of no doubt, in my judgment. It arbitrarily and summarily,
and without any of the forms of law, punishes for an offense
created by the law itself. In the formation of our National
Constitution, its framers designed to prevent and guard
against the exercise of the power of the Legislature, by
usurping judicial functions, and for the punishment of