upon the State no authority over the
Federal elector's right of suffrage; far less does it give the
State authority to deprive the Federal elector of this right,
under pretense of laying down for its own citizens an arbitrary
and impossible condition. In the nature of things, a republican
government could not part with this right of suffrage. As
Hamilton says, such right is justly regarded as a fundamental
article in such government. To part with it, would be to part
with its chiefest attribute of sovereignty, and nothing of the
kind was done, or intended.

Except so far, then, as this decision makes it so, there is not a
particle of authority vested in the States to deny this right of
Federal suffrage to the citizen of the United States. The
regulation of the exercise of the franchise is within their
control, as above stated, but the right itself is not theirs to
give or to withhold. _The right to vote for Federal officers_ is
wholly distinct from the right to vote for State officers; but
the fact of these two rights being blended in one and the same
person, and being usually exercised at the same time, has given
rise to the whole difficulty. In consequence of the fact of the
election being conducted by State officers, the State providing
all the machinery for voting, etc., we have become accustomed,
from long habit, to associate in our minds the one franchise with
the other, and thus confound rights that are wholly separate and
distinct.

We notice, in conclusion, the remark of the court touching the
non-assertion heretofore of this right by any one of the class
now claiming to be entitled to it, and the intimation, or
insinuation, that if the right really existed, it would have been
claimed before, etc. It is true that Mrs. Minor's case is of
"first impression," in the Supreme Court of the United States;
but we fail to see that this fact has anything to do with the
principle involved, or that there can be any such thing as a
"limitation" of rights that are fundamental. If the right exists,
and has a constitutional recognition, the time of its assertion
has nothing to do with it. Only weak minds will be influenced by
a fallacy like this. Because the women of a former day did not
see and feel the necessity of making this claim, is no r