e most
effective method of bringing the South to do justice to the colored
race. He believed that if the Southern States should feel that they
could derive larger political power in the Government of the United
States by admitting colored men to the elective franchise, they would
in time conclude to do so; and doing so they would be compelled in the
mere process to realize their indebtment to that race, and thus from
self-interest, if not from a sense of justice, would extend equal
protection to the whole population. Mr. Fessenden could not refrain
from some good-natured ridicule of the declaratory resolutions which
Mr. Sumner had offered. "Sir," said he, "does the Constitution
authorize oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly? Not at all. Are
you not as safe under the Constitution as you are under an Act of
Congress? Why re-enact the Constitution merely to put it in a bill?
What do you accomplish by it? What remedy does it afford? It is
merely as if it read this way: 'Whereas it is provided in the
Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State of
the Union a republican form of government, therefore we declare that
there shall be a republican form of government, and nothing else.'
That is all there is of it. Of what particular use it is as a bill,
practically, is more than I can tell. I presume the Honorable
Senator from Massachusetts will very easily explain it, but it reminds
me (I say it with all due respect to him) of a political travesty of
a law argument by an eminent lawyer of his own State, running somewhat
in this way;--

'Let my opponents do their worst,
Still my first point is point the first,
Which fully proves my case, because,
All statute laws are statute laws.'

The _sequitur_ is obvious,--the case is proved because, inasmuch as the
Constitution provides that there shall be no aristocracy, no oligarchy,
no monopoly, therefore Congress has resolved that there shall not be
any thing of the kind."

Mr. Fessenden would not admit the essential justice of the argument
which Mr. Sumner made in behalf of universal suffrage, and showed that
he was not consistent in the ground which he took. "While," said he,
"the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts argued with great force that
every man should have the right of suffrage, his argument, connected
with the other principle that he laid down, and the application of it,
--that taxation and representation should go togeth