This testimony is as decisive as it is authentic. Consider that it was given in explanation and vindication of the Constitution. Consider that the Constitution was commended for adoption by the assertion, that, on the termination of Slavery, “the negroes could no longer be refused an _equal share_ of representation with the other inhabitants.” In the face of this assurance, how can it be now insisted, that, under the simple power to regulate the suffrage, a State may deny to a whole race that “equal share of representation” which was promised? Thus from every quarter we are brought to the same inevitable conclusion. Therefore I dismiss the pretension founded on the power to make _regulations_, as I dismiss that other founded on the power to determine _qualifications_. Each proceeds on a radical misconception. Admit that a State may determine _qualifications_; admit that a State may make _regulations_; it cannot follow, by any rule of logic or law, that, under these powers, either or both, it may disfranchise a race. The pretension is too lofty. No such enormous prerogative can be wrung out of any such moderate power. As well say, that, because a constable or policeman may keep order in a city, therefore he may inflict the penalty of death,--or, because a father may impose proper restraint upon a child, therefore he may sell him into slavery. We have read of an effort to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers; but the present effort to extract a cruel prerogative out of the simple words of the Constitution is scarcely less absurd. * * * * * I conclude as I began, in favor of requiring conditions from States on their admission into the Nation; and I insist that it is our especial duty, in every possible way, by compact and by enactment, to assure among these conditions the Equal Rights of All, and the participation of every citizen in the government over him, without which the State cannot be republican. For the present I confine myself to the question of conditions on the admission of States, without considering the broader obligation of Congress to make Equal Rights coextensive with the Nation, and thus to harmonize our institutions with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. That other question I leave to another occasion.