and Representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirtyseventh Congresses; officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States; heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States. These classes will hardly remain exceptional long.

Section 4.-The validity of the public debt of the ·United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

This section had immediate reference to the existing public debt, which was incurred in suppressing the rebellion; but the language is general, and therefore applicable to all public debts. The prohibition as to the payment by the United States or any State of any part of a debt incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, is also general. The measure is one of obvious security, as under the reconstruction laws many of those formerly in the rebellion have been admitted again to the State and National legislatures. It is better for all to have the question settled by the adoption of a clause in the organic law itself.

Section 5.-The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. The same remark may be made of this as of the corresponding section in the Thirteenth Amendment; it seems to be unnecessary. Whatever the Constitution requires, Congress has the power to carry out by ap

propriate legislation, whether there be specific provision. for it or not.

Article 15, Sec. 1.-The right of citizens 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.

Sec. 2.-The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to secure suffrage to the freedmen. This was to be done indirectly, however. The right of suffrage was not conferred upon the colored race by a direct affirmative grant, but the States which should withhold it were to have their number of Representatives in Congress reduced in proportion. The measure was not attended with the success which was anticipated. The enfranchisement of the colored race was deemed indispensable to their own safety and to the prosperity of the nation; and the first plan to secure it having failed, a second was proposed. Hence this Fifteenth Amendment. It declares expressly that the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment declared the colored race to be citizens, and thus gave them all civil rights; and the Fifteenth secures them suffrage, and thus bestows upon them political rights.

This article does not, of course, imply that all citizens possess the right to vote. We have seen that the Fourteenth Amendment declares children, as well as adults, to be citizens; showing that to make the right of suffrage co-extensive with citizenship would be simply absurd. The meaning is that the right to vote of those citizens who enjoy the right, to wit., males of twentyone years, shall not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It may not be

denied for either of these three causes, but it may for any other. The freedmen are put upon an equality with others as to the right of suffrage. If an educational qualification is required, it will apply to the whites as well. So with a property qualification. Virtually, this Amendment establishes universal suffrage; and while some great evils were in this way prevented, the extension of the elective franchise to a large number of ignorant persons, can not be viewed but with deep regret, and with grave foreboding. Weighty obligations rest on all intelligent citizens to extend to this class of our population the opportunities of education, that they may vote intelligently.

The right to vote implies the right to be voted for. In May, 1870, Congress enacted a stringent law "to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote." It was amended in February, 1871.

This Fifteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress, February 27th, 1869, and declared to be duly ratified March 30th, 1870.

AMENDMENTS PROPOSED BUT NOT RATIFIED.

Besides the fifteen Amendments which have become a part of the Constitution, four have been proposed by Congress but not ratified by the legislatures of threefourths of the States. Two of these were proposed by the First Congress. Twelve were proposed, of which the last ten were ratified. The others were as follows:

1. After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons until the number of Representatives shall amount

C. G. 24.

to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

2. No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

The following Amendment was proposed by the Eleventh Congress at their second session:

3. If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them or either of them.

The fourth of the Amendments proposed but not ratified was at the close of the Thirty-sixth Congress, March 2d, 1861. It has been quoted on a former page.

4. No Amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

CHAPTER V.

THE RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION BY THE SEVERAL STATES.

The Convention which formed the Constitution met in Philadelphia on the second of May, 1787, but the organization was not effected till the twenty-fifth. George Washington was appointed President. All the States were represented but Rhode Island. Connecticut did not send a delegation till a fortnight after the time appointed, and New Hampshire was not represented till the twenty-third of July.

The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on Saturday, September 15th, and signed by the members on Monday, the 17th. In the Convention the vote was by States, and as two of the three delegates from New York-Messrs. Lansing and Yates-had withdrawn when it was decided to form a new Constitution instead of revising the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution was adopted by the delegates from eleven States. It was thought desirable that the instrument should go forth to the public with the signatures of the individual delegates, as well as the official attestation of the Convention. The following was the form: "Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord 1787, and of the Independence of the United States the twelfth. In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names." All the delegates present signed it except Messrs. Randolph and Mason from Virginia, and Mr. Gerry from Massachusetts. New York was not officially present in the