most numerous branch of the State Legislature."

By this provision, what shall qualify a person to be an elector, is left
entirely to the States. Whoever, in any State, is permitted to vote for
members of the most numerous branch of its legislature, is also
competent to vote for Representatives in Congress. The State might
require a property qualification, or it might dispense with it. It might
permit negroes to vote, or it might exclude them. It might permit women
to vote, or even foreigners, and the federal constitution would not be
infringed. If a State had provided a different qualification for an
elector of Representatives in Congress, from that required of an elector
of the most numerous branch of its Legislature, the power of the federal
constitution might be invoked, and the law annuled. But never was the
idea entertained, that this provision of the Constitution authorizes
Congress to pass laws for the punishment of individuals in the States
for illegal voting, or State returning officers for receiving illegal
votes.

This power, if it exist, must be found in the recent Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution.

I assume that your Honor will hold, as you did yesterday in Miss
Anthony's case, that these amendments do not confer the right to vote
upon citizens of the United States, and therefore not upon women. That
decision is the law of this case. It follows necessarily from that
decision, that these amendments have nothing to do with the right of
voting, except so far as that right "_is denied or abridged by the
United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude_."

The thirteenth article of the Amendments to the Constitution of the
United States, in Section 1, ordains that "_neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction_."

Section 2, ordains that "_Congress shall have power to enforce this
Article by appropriate legislation_."

The fourteenth article of the Amendments to the Constitution of the
United States, ordains in Section 1, "_All persons born or naturalized
in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States, and of the State where they reside. No
State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the Unit