h the right of _instructing
their representatives_, and as negroes are not electors and
consequently are without representatives, it is inferred that they
are not part of _the people_. That Ohio legislators are not
Christians would be a more rational conclusion. One of the members
avowed his opinion that "none but voters had a right to petition." If
then, according to the principle of the resolution, the Constitution
of Ohio denies the right of petition to all but electors, let us
consider the practical results of such a denial. In the first place,
every female in the State is placed under the same disability with
"blacks and mulattoes." No wife has a right to ask for a divorce--no
daughter may plead for a father's life. Next, no man under
twenty-one years--no citizen of any age, who from want of sufficient
residence, or other qualification, is not entitled to vote--no
individual among the tens of thousands of aliens in the
State--however oppressed and wronged by official tyranny or
corruption, has a right to seek redress from the representatives of
the people, and should he presume to do so, may be told, that, like
"blacks and mulattoes," he "has no constitutional right to present
his petition to the General Assembly for any purpose whatever."
Again--the State of Ohio is deeply indebted to the citizens of other
States, and also to the subjects of Great Britain for money borrowed
to construct her canals. Should any of these creditors lose their
certificates of debt, and ask for their renewal; or should their
interest be withheld, or paid in depreciated currency, and were they
to ask for justice at the hands of the legislature, they might be
told, that any attention paid to their request must be regarded as a
"mere act of privilege or policy, and not imposed by any expressed
or implied power of the Constitution," for, not being voters, they
stood on the same ground as "blacks and mulattoes." Such is the
folly and wickedness in which prejudice against color has involved
the legislators of a republican and professedly Christian State in
the nineteenth century.

4. EXCLUSION FROM THE ARMY AND MILITIA.

The Federal Government is probably the only one in the world that
forbids a portion of its subjects to participate in the national
defence, not from any doubts of their courage, loyalty, or physical
strength, but merely on account of the tincture of their skin! To
such an absurd extent is this prejudice against color car