idea of forcing Congress to repeal
the test oath, and were incapacitated to be legislators even if they had
been sent from loyal States. The few who were loyal men in the sense
that they had not served the Rebel government, were still palpably
elected by constituents who had; and the character of the constituency
is as legitimate a subject of Congressional inquiry as the character of
the representative.

It not being true, then, that the twenty-two hundred thousand loyal
voters who placed Mr. Johnson in office, and whom he betrayed, have no
means by their representatives in Congress to exert a controlling power
in the reconstruction of the Rebel communities, the question comes up as
to the conditions which Congress has imposed. It always appeared to us
that the true measure of conciliation, of security, of mercy, of
justice, was one which would combine the principle of universal amnesty,
or an amnesty nearly universal, with that of universal, or at least of
impartial suffrage. In regard to amnesty, the amendment to the
Constitution which Congress has passed disqualifies no Rebels from
voting, and only disqualifies them from holding office when they have
happened to add perjury to treason. In regard to suffrage, it makes it
for the political interest of the South to be just to its colored
citizens, by basing representation on voters, and not on population, and
thus places the indulgence of class prejudices and hatreds under the
penalty of a corresponding loss of political power in the Electoral
College and the National House of Representatives. If the Rebel States
should be restored without this amendment becoming a part of the
Constitution, then the recent Slave States will have thirty Presidential
Electors and thirty members of the House of Representatives in virtue of
a population they disfranchise, and the vote of a Rebel white in South
Carolina will carry with it more than double the power of a loyal white
in Massachusetts or Ohio. The only ground on which this disparity can be
defended is, that as "one Southerner is more than a match for two
Yankees," he has an inherent, continuous, unconditioned right to have
this superiority recognized at the ballot-box. Indeed, the injustice of
this is so monstrous, that the Johnson orators find it more convenient
to decry all conditions of representation than to meet the
incontrovertible reasons for exacting the condition which bases
representation on voters. Not to make it a p