According to these definitions “qualification” means “fitness” or “accomplishment,” and according to examples from classical writers it means qualities like “piety” and “virtue,” or like “mind.” Obviously it cannot embrace color, which is a physical condition, insurmountable in nature. An insurmountable condition is not a _qualification_, but a _disfranchisement_. As well say that the quality of the hair or the length of the foot should be a “qualification,” as the color of the skin. The whole pretension is one of the false glosses fastened upon the National Constitution by Slavery, which must now be sloughed off. * * * * * 7. Again, I exhibit the proposition as positively _tying the hands of Congress in its interpretation of a republican government_, so that, under the guaranty clause, it must recognize an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color, with the tyranny of taxation without representation, as _republican in character_, which I insist they are not. At present the hands of Congress are not tied. Congress is free to act generously, nobly, truly, according to the highest idea of a republic, discountenancing all inequality of rights and the tyranny of taxation without representation. Let this pretension find place in the Constitution, and the guaranty clause will be restricted in operation. The two clauses taken together, as they must be, will read substantially: “The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government: it being understood that the denial or abridgment of the elective franchise on account of race or color, and the tyranny of taxation without representation, are not inconsistent with a republican government.” In other words the denial or abridgment of the elective franchise on account of race or color, and the tyranny of taxation without representation, will be recognized in the Constitution as republican in character. Of course all attempt to enforce this guaranty against an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color, or against the tyranny of taxation without representation, will be from this time impossible. The precious power now existing will be lost forever. * * * * *