cal benefit, not very precisely measured, to black men.
2. An inquiry as to actual intent in such a case is never
admissible. A rule that allowed it would make every law
uncertain. An enactment can be construed only by the language in
fact used, and where that language is doubtful, by other parts of
the same enactment, and by a consideration of the public evil
which the law was intended to remedy. The evil to be remedied in
this case was the political disadvantage under which black men,
made free by the XIII. Amendment, still labored. The object was
to give them a positive political benefit. The terms used are
such that, necessarily and confessedly, whatever benefit accrues
to black men under it accrues equally to women.

It is said, in the next place, that the term "citizen" has
acquired a meaning in American usage, legal and political, that
does not carry with it the idea of suffrage; and the report of
the majority of the Judiciary Committee on the Woodhull memorial
places its adverse construction of this amendment entirely on the
ground of an American use of the term in its restricted sense.
Such a use of the term undoubtedly exists. Webster recognizes it,
and so do some of our political writers. But this meaning is a
secondary and lower one, and has not attained such dignity of use
as to encroach at all upon the well-established general meaning,
and would not be presumed in a law, much less in a constitution.
The American authorities are strongly in favor of the larger
meaning.

The term is used in the second section of the original
Constitution, article four, which provides that "the citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States." In Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4
Wash. C. C. R., 380, the court say: "The inquiry is what are the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States? They
may be all comprehended under the following general heads: (Here
follows a statement of numerous rights, civil and political,
closing as follows:) "To which may be added the elective
franchise as regulated and established by the laws or
constitution of the State in which it is to be exercised." And in
the Dred Scott case, 19 Howard, 476, Mr. Justice Daniel says:

There is not, it i