I may be mistaken, Sir, but I think it difficult to read this proposition without being painfully impressed by the discord and defilement it will introduce into the National Constitution, having among specific objects the guaranty of a republican form of government. The discord appears on the face. The defilement is none the less apparent. Go back, if you please, to the adoption of the Constitution, and you will gratefully acknowledge that the finest saying of the times was when Madison, evidently inspired by the Declaration of Independence, and determined to keep the Constitution in harmony with it, insisted, in well-known words, that it was “WRONG to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.”[40] Of all that has come to us from that historic Convention, where Washington sat as President, and Franklin and Hamilton sat as members, there is nothing with so much of imperishable charm. It was wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that man could hold property in man. In this spirit the Constitution was framed. This offensive idea was not admitted. The text, at least, was kept blameless. And now, after generations have passed, surrounded by the light of Christian truth and in the full blaze of Human Freedom, it is proposed to admit in the Constitution a twin idea of Inequality in Rights, and thus openly set at nought the first principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the guaranty of a republican government itself, while you blot out a whole race politically. For some time we have been carefully expunging from the statute-book the word “white,” and now it is proposed to insert in the Constitution itself a distinction of color. An amendment, according to the dictionaries, is “an improvement,” “a change for the better.” Surely the present proposition is an amendment which, like the crab, goes backward. Such is the appearance, when you regard it merely in form, without penetrating its substance; but here it is none the less offensive. The case is plain. Still among us are four million citizens robbed of all share in the government of a common country, while, at the same time, according to their means, they are taxed, directly and indirectly, for the support of the Government. Nobody will question the statement. And this bare-faced tyranny of taxation without representation it is now proposed to recognize as not inconsistent with fundamental right and the guaranty of a republican government. Instead of blasting it, you go forward to embrace it as an element of political power.