the difference in the
representation from the several States would be unimportant and
immaterial, even under the proposed change, hence there would be no
occasion for the change. The fact that this assumption is not true
furnishes the basis for the alleged inequality in representation, and
the apparent necessity for the change proposed. In addition to this it
is a well-known fact that in several of the Southern States,--my own,
Mississippi, among the number,--the Fifteenth Amendment to the National
Constitution has been practically nullified, and that the colored men in
such States have been as effectually disfranchised as if the Fifteenth
Amendment were not a part of the organic law of the land. If the plan
that is now proposed by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania
should be adopted, the National Republican party by accepting them and
making them the basis of representation in future National Conventions
of the party will have thereby placed itself on record as having given
its sanction to the questionable methods by which these results have
been accomplished. I frankly confess that the plan I have presented is
based upon the humiliating confession that the Government is without
power under the Constitution as construed by the Supreme Court to
effectually enforce the war amendments; and that in consequence thereof
nothing is left to be done but to fall back upon the plan prescribed by
the Fourteenth Amendment, which is to reduce the representation in
Congress from such States in the manner and for the purposes therein
stated.

"It is true that the Fourteenth Amendment having been proposed and
submitted prior to the Fifteenth, the provision with reference to
reduction of representation in Congress was predicated upon the
assumption that the different States could then legally make race or
color a ground of discrimination in prescribing the qualification of
electors. Still, it occurs to me that if a State could be thus punished
for doing that which it had a legal right to do, the same punishment can
now be inflicted for doing that which it can no longer legally do. If
the plan proposed by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania
should be adopted, the Republican party will not only have placed itself
on record as having given its sanction to the methods by which these
results will have been accomplished, but it will be notice to the
different States, north as well as south, that any of them that may see