And now, Sir, I come to the question. Suppose Congress declares that no person shall be excluded from any church on account of race, color, or previous condition; where is the interference with the constitutional provision? Is that setting up a church establishment? Oh, no, Sir! It is simply setting up the Declaration of Independence in its primal truths, and applying them to churches as to other institutions. MR. CARPENTER. Will my friend allow me,--not for the purpose of interrupting him, but to come to the point? Suppose Congress should pass a law that in no church in this country should the Host be exalted during divine service. MR. SUMNER. The Senator knows well the difference. This is a religious observance. Congress cannot interfere with any religious observance. Congress can do nothing to set up a religious establishment. It can make no law respecting an establishment of religion. But the Senator must see that in the case he puts, the proposed law would be the very thing prohibited by the Constitution. I thank him for that instance. I propose no interference with any religious observance,--not in the least: far from it. Sir, the case is clear as day. All that I ask is, that, in harmony with the Declaration of Independence, there be complete equality before the law everywhere,--in the inn, on the highway, in the common school, in the church, on juries,--ay, Sir, and in the last resting-place on earth. The Senator steps forward and says: No,--I cannot accept equality in the church. There the Constitutional Amendments interpreted by the Declaration are powerless; there a White Man’s Government shall prevail. A church organization may be incorporated by National or State authority, and yet allowed to insult brothers of the human family on account of the skin. In the church this outrage may be perpetrated,--because to forbid it would interfere with religion and set up an establishment. Such, Sir, is the argument of the Senator; and he makes it in the name of Religious Liberty! Good God, Sir! Religious liberty! The liberty to insult a fellow-man on account of his skin! You listened to his eloquent, fervid appeal. I felt its eloquence, but regretted that such power was employed in such a cause. I said, that, consciously or unconsciously, he had copied Petroleum V. Nasby, in the letter of that renowned character entitled, “Goes on with his Church,” from which I read a brief passage:-- “CHURCH OF ST. VALLANDIGUM, “_June the 10th, 1863_.