In this proposition, which, though not adopted in terms, may be regarded as the pole-star of our fathers, the distinguished author followed the Continental Congress, which recommended the apportionment of the war expenses among the “free citizens and inhabitants,” without distinction of color.[265] This rule is in entire conformity with that matured by ancient experience, especially in Greece, where, according to the universal master, Aristotle,-- “The whole body of the inhabitants of a country enjoying the protection of its laws, including the young who are still under the legal age, and the very old who have passed the time of action, and all others under any other species of disability, are in a certain wide and general sense citizens; but the full and complete definition of a _citizen_ is confined to those who participate in the governing power.”[266] Proving, as I have, that colored persons are citizens, this very definition teaches that they cannot be refused participation in the governing power. The historian Thirlwall, in his studies of Greek polity, recognized this rule, when he wrote:-- “But a finished democracy, that which fully satisfied the Greek notion, was one in which every attribute of sovereignty might be shared, without respect to rank or property, by _every freeman_.”[267] In recognizing the right of “every freeman” to the full enjoyment of the elective franchise, our fathers followed the early example. Curiously enough, we find confirmation of the true principle, where you would little expect it, in that very Dred Scott decision which undertook to blast a race. Chief Justice Taney on that occasion laid down a rule which at this moment is applicable to every “citizen,” without distinction of color:-- “The words, ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizens’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body, who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the ‘sovereign people’; _and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty_.”[268] This is strong enough; but Mr. Justice Daniel is still more precise:-- “There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on Government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term _citizen_, which has not been understood as conferring _the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political_.”[269] Thus does that terrible judgment, once a ban to the colored race, now testify to their indisputable rights as “citizens.”