e Supreme Court. Neither
the people of the United States in their political sovereignty, nor
the political branch of the Government in its representative capacity
can exert any direct influence upon the decision of the questions that
may arise. The questions that may arise will be judicial questions,
and they will fall under the decision of the judicial tribunals. Hence
there has never been a time when it was the duty or when it was in the
power or within the scope of the duty of the executive branch of the
National Government to take official notice of the legislation in some
of the former slave States, which is designed manifestly to limit the
voting power of the negro population in those States.

If such legislation does not fall under the Fifteenth Amendment it will
be subject to the penalty imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment,--a
proportionate loss of representative power in the House of
Representatives and in the Electoral Colleges.

As one of the three remaining members of the Committee on the
Judiciary, and as one of the three remaining members of the Committee
on Reconstruction, I wish to say, without any reservation whatever,
that the amendments are accomplishing and are destined to accomplish
all that was expected by the committees that were charged with the
duty of providing for the protection of the rights of the freedmen.

They were relived from the disparaging distinctions that came into
existence with the system of slavery. They were placed upon an
equality with other citizens and in the forms of law all
discriminations affecting unfavorably the right of suffrage must
apply equally to all citizens. The injustice and unwisdom of the
restrictive legislation in which the Southern States are indulging,
are subject of concern for the whole country, but the negro populations
have no ground for the complaint that their rights have been neglected
by the General Government.

This, however, is true: The negro population, in common with all
others, has ground for just and continuing complaint against the
legislation of Congress by which a portion of the inhabitants of the
Hawaiian Islands have been denationalized on account of race or color,
or on account of a condition of mental or physical inferiority.

The process of reasoning by which the legislation of the States of the
South is condemned, by those who uphold the legislation in regard to
Hawaii involves a question in political ethics which for the m