more improbable than that either one of the original States, whose people had undergone such sufferings, and made such sacrifices of property and of blood to gain their independence, would have voluntarily surrendered it by conceding to the people of any other State, or to any power outside of themselves, the right to dictate who should or should not participate in the control of their local affairs.

What was the spirit and essence of the reservation made by the States of certain rights and powers? It was clearly understood that a "reserved power" was one withdrawn and excluded entirely from the operation of any and every clause in the Federal Constitution, including the clause in reference to amendments. The powers reserved were left under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of each State, free from any other influence or control. This is what was intended and what was effected by reserving certain rights. Each State felt unwilling to place the rights which were thus retained, where they could be interfered with by any power except its own citizens, and the wisdom of this is becoming more manifest every day.

THE PRACTICE OF THE GOVERNMENT TENDS TO SUPPORT THE VIEWS ABOVE ADVANCED.

The first twelve amendments to the Constitution are designed to secure more perfectly the powers reserved by the States, and the personal rights of their citizens, and the twelfth amendment repeats the requirement that in voting for President the House of Representatives shall vote by States, each State having one vote. It was not until recently, after the Government had been in operation three-fourths of a century, that any attempt was made by amendment to interfere with the exclusive right of each State to regulate its domestic concerns. So far, therefore, as the uniform practice of the Government has weight, it bears strongly against the interpretation placed upon the clause under consideration by those who favor this amendment. It seems clear, then, upon principle and authority, that if the proposed amendment went through the forms of adoption it would be a mere brutum fulmen, destitate of any validity whatever. Aside, however, from the legal questions involved, the objections to the proposition on the score of public policy seem unanswerable. To say that the people of California should tie their hands upon this subject, is to charge upon them either incompetency to comprehend what is expedient and just to those within her jurisdiction, or unwillingness to be governed by justice and sound policy. It would require some boldness for any one to come before the people of this State with such a charge, and if the people are competent to determine whether any, and what, restrictions should be placed upon the elective franchise, it is difficult to discover any plausible reason why they should surrender the power of determination to a Congress of which they elect but five members in both Houses. It is fair to presume that the people of this State understand their duties and interests in reference to this subject quite as well as they are understood by the people of the States east of the mountains.

If this amendment is adopted, the most degraded Digger Indian within our borders becomes at once an elector and, so far, a ruler. His vote would count for as much as that of the most intelligent white man in the State. In this event, also, by a slight amendment to the naturalization laws, the Chinese population could be made electors.

It is contended by some that the exercise of suffrage is a matter of

absolute right, which cannot be withheld from any adult person, male or female, living under the Government. It is only upon this ground, if it were tenable, that there could be any argument in favor of the proposition embodied in the amendment; but this will not bear a moment's discussion. The elective franchise is not a right, but a privilege, to be conferred upon such classes only as can exercise it for the general good. If it were an absolute right, then the naturalization laws, requiring five years' residence, have been a continued outrage upon those who have come here from Europe to make this country their home. The whole theory of those laws is based upon increased qualifications supposed to result from a residence of five years. It is upon the same ground only that we justify our denial of the right to vote to young men of nineteen and twenty. The right of suffrage has never, at any time, nor in any country, been deemed an absolute or inalienable right, and never will be so, until common sense and reason cease to be a guide in political affairs.

There is no plausible argument, then, in favor of this amendment, which can be addressed to the people of this State. On the contrary, every consideration of legal right and public policy makes against it. Nothing could be more loose and objectionable than the clause which authorizes Congress to enforce the restraint upon the States by "appropriate" legislation. Who is to judge of what is "appropriate?" Under this phraseology, Congress is made the exclusive judge; and if it declares any particular measure enacted by that body to be appropriate, it would claim that, upon rules of construction, no tribunal would have the right to revise its discretion. Congress, then, under the guise of professedly "appropriate" legislation, could enact almost anything which a fertile imagination might suggest.

There is another serious objection to the form of this amendment. It declares that certain specified restrictions shall not be placed upon the elective franchise by the United States, leaving the inference open that any other restriction may be. The same school of loose constructionists, who are laboring to transform our federative system into a consolidated one, will hereafter argue that to restrict the United States in one direction recognizes their right to act in any other, and places, therefore, the whole subject under Congressional control. The artifice and deception already employed to engraft this provision upon the Constitution justify suspicions of the good faith of its advocates; but, whatever may be the motive for selecting the phraseology, the danger is apparent that an implication will be founded upon it to take from the States any power to resist Federal interference with suffrage, upon any ground which may accord with the judgment or caprice of representatives from other States.

The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, so called, have a direct design and tendency to centralize the Government, and to deprive each State of any control over its local affairs. Under the Constitution, as originally framed, certain appropriate functions were assigned to the Federal Executive and Congress. It was intended to confine them to such objects as affected all the States in their federative capacity, and to leave each State the exclusive control of its local and domestic concerns. To depart from this design, and centralize all power at the Federal Capital, is to diverge widely from the original spirit of our system, and to violate the principles of self-government.

Any control over the local affairs of this State exercised by representatives elected by the people of one or more of the Atlantic States is

essentially a despotic control, because it is exercised by legislators neither chosen by us nor responsible to us. A rule not resulting from our choice, and wholly irresponsible, is of the essence of despotism. If, in our local concerns and interests, we are to be governed by representatives of other States, we might as well be governed by a foreign king or emperor. The control might be more enlightened and more conscientious in the former case, or it might not; but it certainly would not be less absolute, irresponsible and despotic.

We elect three of the two hundred and thirty-four members of the House and two of the seventy-four members of the Senate, but if those bodies are to regulate our domestic affairs and dictate to us our whole domestic and internal policy, we might as well have no representative in either body, because when they chance to differ from an arbitrary majority, ignorant of our wishes and interests, their voices and votes. would be powerless. The evil is not atoned for to any extent, because at some time in the future our representatives might in the same way tyrannize over other communities. We neither desire to practice nor suffer despotic rule, and if the various amendments already proposed to the Federal Constitution were to have any legal validity, it is difficult to see what substantial right of self-government would be secure from the encroachments of central power.

The means taken to secure the passage of the proposed amendment are not such as to commend it to favor. A pledge of as solemn and unequivocal a character as could be framed, was given by the successful party in the late Presidential contest against any interference with the right of each of the Northern States to exercise exclusive control over the suffrage within their territory. Upon this pledge they succeeded in electing their candidates, and as soon as their success was secured they proceeded at once, in deliberate violation of the pledge given, to adopt every means within their reach to do precisely what they declared they would not do. These measures were as unworthy as the scheme itself was disreputable. Representatives were excluded from States which had not assented to the amendment, and their admission held out as a bribe to secure its ratification. Every expedient of coercion on the one hand and reward on the other has been resorted to. The people were not allowed the opportunity to manifest their will, but the amendment was pressed through the Legislature of more than one State whose people were notoriously adverse to it. No amendment adopted by the use of such means could possess any binding obligation unless it has become a principle of constitutional law that falsehood, fraud and duress can impart validity to an amendment when the same elements would avoid a contract between private parties in any Court of justice in christendom.

No

It

It is idle to suppose that the people of this State or of any other of the States will be satisfied to have wrested from them the right to control their local affairs. They are not blind to the fact, that it is this control which is but another name for liberty, and which is liberty. system which violates the maxims and principles of freedom can be ⚫ made permanent by political artifice or by the use of military force. is too much in conflict with the genius and traditions of the American people, and with that inextinguishable love of liberty which, though it may seem dormant for a while, will certainly revive and assert its irresistible power. It is not possible for an oligarchy of politicians, sitting in conclave at Washington, to continue long to exercise arbitrary control over the people of remote States in all the arrogance of conscious tyr

anny, violating that cardinal doctrine of all free government, to wit: that every people has the absolute and inalienable right to control their own destiny, and to form their own political and social institutions. It is this principle, consecrated by the blood of the martyrs of freedom in our own revolution and in all ages, which no political organization can safely violate, and which lies at the foundation of the struggle now in progress in this country. The attempt is made to transfer political power from the people themselves to legislators at Washington; to submerge the Executive and Judiciary under unlimited Congressional control; to destroy all the checks and balances of our system and convert it into one resembling the French National Convention, from which the people of that country gladly escaped by seeking refuge in the despotism of one man from that of an unscrupulous and tyrannical legislative majority. Such an attempt can never permanently succeed among a people educated to freedom as are the Americans from childhood. It needs but that they should see the contest as it is between liberty and local self-government on one side and centralized power or despotism on the other, and to this they cannot long be blind. Peace in our distracted country is an object desired by all, but it is only attainable by recognizing the truth that Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that it is not possible to perpetuate arbitrary rule, in the hands either of a king or of a Congress. The right of self-government is as sacred to the people of Georgia as it is to those of Massachusetts, and the tyranny of political adventurers over the people of States whose representatives have been arbitrarily excluded from Congress, to whom all the promises of the Government have been falsified and whose liberties have been trampled under foot, will at no distant day be justly regarded as among the most wrongful of those which have defaced the annals of modern times.

It would be unjust to the mass of the Republican party to suppose that this tyranny has their deliberate sanction. It is condemned by all of them whose minds are not under the dominion of party prejudice and whose judgments are not clouded by the bitterness engendered in the war; but if it were true that the rank and file of that party or the majority of the people of the Northern States were so far misled by their political leaders as to look on with complacency while chains were being placed on their own necks and on those of their Southern bretheren, we would still owe it to ourselves and to the cause of constitutional liberty throughout the world, to raise our voices in condemnation and in warning.

In view, then, of the want of legal power to bind any State to this so-called amendment, and of the pernicious principle which it embodies, as well as in view of the scandalous manner in which the people of the several States have been sought to be defrauded, bribed and coerced into its adoption, I trust it will be formally rejected by your honorable bodies. H. H. HAIGHT.

MESSAGE FROM THE ASSEMBLY.

The following message was received from the Assembly:

Mr. PRESIDENT:

I am directed to inform your honorable body, that

the Assembly, on the twenty-first day of December, eighteen hundred

and sixty-seven, passed Assembly Bill No. 15-An Act amendatory of and supplemental to an Act entitled an Act relative to the office of District Attorney of the County of Sacramento, approved March sixteenth, eighteen hundred and sixty-four.

Also, on the fourth day of January, eighteen hundred and seventy, passed Assembly Bill No. 23-An Act to authorize Alexis Kustel and Oscar Kustel, and their assigns, to construct and maintain a chute and landing at or near Fish-rock landing, Mendocino County, and to charge and collect tolls for the use of the same.

Also, Assembly Bill No. 32-An Act to extend the provisions of an Act entitled an Act concerning hogs running at large in certain counties in this State, approved April twenty-first, eighteen hundred and sixtyfive.

Also, Assembly Bill No. 28-An Act entitled an Act to authorize the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco to pay a · certain claim of P. W. Vanwinkle.

Also, passed Senate Bill No. 13-An Act to authorize the Board of Supervisors of Mariposa County to levy an additional tax for county expenditures.

And that the Assembly refused to concur in Senate amendment to Assembly Bill No. 14-An Act to provide for purchasing postage stamps express envelops for members and officers of the Legislature.

CRAWFORD,

Assistant Clerk.

The following message was also received from the Assembly:

Mr. PRESIDENT: I am directed to inform your honorable body that the Assembly, on yesterday, passed Senate Bill No, 58-An Act to amend an Act entitled an Act to provide for the management and sale of the lands belonging to the State, approved March twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and sixty-eight.

Also, passed Assembly Bill No. 2-An Act amendatory of and supplementary to an Act, passed March twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, entitled an Act to organize and regulate the Justice's Court in the City and County of San Francisco, and to extend the powers and duties of the Sheriff of said city and county.

CRAWFORD,
Assistant Clerk.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS.

Bills were introduced as follows:

By Mr. Tompkins-An Act to settle and pay the unpaid expenses of the State geological survey.

Read first and second times and referred to the Finance Committee. By Mr. Minis-An Act to authorize a steam ferry to ply between South Vallejo, the City of Vallejo and Mare Island.

Read first and second times and, with accompanying documents, referred to the Committee on Commerce and Navigation, and ordered printed.