Mr. Bingham said: "And, first, I beg gentlemen to consider that I do not oppose any legislation which is authorized by the Constitution of my country to enforce in its letter and its spirit the bill of rights as embodied in that Constitution. I know that the enforcement of the bill of rights is the want of the republic. I know if it had been enforced in good faith in every State of the Union, the calamities, and conflicts, and crimes, and sacrifices of the past five years would have been impossible. "But I feel that I am justified in saying, in view of the text of the Constitution of my country, in view of all its past interpretations, in view of the manifest and declared intent of the men who framed it, the enforcement of the Bill of Rights, touching the life, liberty, and property of every citizen of the republic, within every organized State of the Union, is of the reserved powers of the States, to be enforced by State tribunals and by State officials, acting under the solemn obligations of an oath imposed upon them by the Constitution of the United States. Who can doubt this conclusion who considers the words of the Constitution, 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people?' The Constitution does not delegate to the United States the power to punish offenses against the life, liberty, or property of the citizen in the States, nor does it prohibit that power to the States, but leaves it as the reserved power of the States, to be by them exercised. The prohibitions of power by the Constitution to the States are express prohibitions, as that no State shall enter into any treaty, etc., or emit bills of credit, or pass any bill of attainder, etc. The Constitution does not prohibit States from the enactment of laws for the general government of the people within their respective limits. "The law in every State should be just; it should be no respecter of persons. It is otherwise now, and it has been otherwise for many years in many of the States of the Union. I should remedy that, not by arbitrary assumption of power, but by amending the Constitution of the United States, expressly prohibiting the States from any such abuse of power in the future. You propose to make it a penal offense for the judges of the States to obey the Constitution and laws of their States, and for their obedience thereto to punish them by fine and imprisonment as felons. I deny your power to do this. You can not make an official act, done under color of law, and without criminal intent, and from a sense of public duty, a crime." [Illustration: James F. Wilson.]