is based, they are legally entitled to an
equal share in direct representation.

In 1884 the case of Jasper Yarbrough and others who had been sentenced
to hard labor in the penitentiary in Georgia for preventing a colored
man from voting for a member of Congress, was brought to the U. S.
Supreme Court by a petition for a writ of _habeas corpus_. The
decision rendered March 2, virtually nullified that given by this
court in the case of Mrs. Minor in 1875, as quoted above, which held
that "the National Constitution has no voters," for this one declared:

But it is not correct to say that the right to vote for a member
of Congress does not depend on the Constitution of the United
States. The office, if it be properly called an office, is
created by the Constitution and by that alone. It also declares
how it shall be filled, namely, by election. Its language is:
"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen
every second year by the people of the several States; and the
electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite
for electors of the most numerous branch of the State
Legislature."

The States in prescribing the qualifications of voters for the
most numerous branch of their own Legislature, do not do this
with reference to the election for members of Congress. Nor can
they prescribe the qualifications for those _eo nomine_ [by that
name].

They define who are to vote for the popular branch of their own
Legislature, and the Constitution of the United States says the
same persons shall vote for members of Congress in that State.

It adopts the qualification thus furnished as the qualification
of its own electors for members of Congress. _It is not true,
therefore, that the electors for members of Congress owe their
right to vote to the State law in any sense which makes the
exercise of the right to depend exclusively on the law of the
State._

Counsel for petitioners seizing upon the expression found in the
opinion of the Court in the case of _Minor vs. Happersett_, "that
the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right
of suffrage upon any one," without reference to the connection in
which it is used, insists that the voters in this case do not owe
their right to vote in any sense to that instrument. But the
Court