By these definitions this word means “fitness,” or “accomplishment,” and, according to the well-chosen examples from Swift and Atterbury, it means qualities like “piety” and “virtue,” or like faculties “of mind,” all of which are more or less within the reach of every human being. But it is impossible to extend this list so as to make “color” a quality,--absolutely impossible. Color is a physical condition affixed by the God of Nature to a large portion of the human race, and insurmountable in its character. Age, education, residence, property,--all these are subject to change; but the Ethiopian cannot change his skin. On this last distinctive circumstance I take my stand. _An insurmountable condition is not a qualification, but a disfranchisement._ Admit that a State may determine the “qualifications” of electors, it cannot, under this authority, arbitrarily exclude a whole race. Try this question by examples. Suppose South Carolina, where the blacks are numerous, should undertake to exclude the whites from the polls on account of “color”; would you hesitate to arrest this injustice? You would insist that a government sanctioning such a denial of rights, under whatever pretension, could not be republican. Suppose another State should gravely declare that _all with black eyes_ should be excluded from the polls, and still another should gravely declare that _all with black hair_ should be excluded from the polls, I am sure that you would find it difficult to restrain the mingled derision and indignation which such a pretension must excite. But this fable pictures your conduct. All this is now gravely done by States; and Senators gravely insist that such exclusion is proper in determining the “qualifications” of electors. 2. Like unto the pretension founded on a misinterpretation of “qualifications” is that other founded on a misinterpretation of the asserted power of a State to make “regulations.” Listen to this pretension. Assuming that a State may _regulate_ the elections without the intervention of Congress, it is insisted that it may disfranchise a race. Because a State may regulate the elective franchise, _therefore_ it may destroy this franchise. Surely it is one thing to regulate, and quite another thing to destroy. The power to regulate cannot involve any such conclusion of tyranny. To every such wretched result, howsoever urged, there is one sufficient reply,--_Non sequitur_.