There are several ways in which our government may be annihilated without the firing of a gun. For example, suppose the people of the United States should say, we will elect no representatives to congress. Of course this is a violent supposition; but suppose that they do not. Is there any remedy? Does our constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two years there would be no House of Representatives; of course, no support of the government and no government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their legislatures, we will elect no senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent it. Again, suppose the two houses were to assemble in their usual order, and a majority of one in this body or in the Senate should firmly band themselves together and say, we will vote to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every session during our two years of existence--the government would perish, and there is no provision of the constitution to prevent it. The States may inform their representatives that they can do this; and, under this position, they have the power and the right so to do. Gentlemen, we are now on the verge of one of the most important presidential campaigns. The party in power holds its reins by a very uncertain tenure. If the decision shall favor the one which has been on the anxious bench for lo! these twenty years, and in probation until hope has well-nigh departed, what may be its action if invested again with the control of the destinies of this nation? The next party in power may inquire, and answer, by what right and how far the Southern States are bound by the legislation in which they had no part or consent. And if the Supreme Court of a Republican judiciary now declares, _after_ the war, _after_ the constitutional amendments, that federal suffrage does not exist and never had an existence in the constitution, it follows that the South has the right to regulate and control all of the questions arising upon suffrage in the several States without any interference on the part of an authority which declares it has no jurisdiction. An able writer has said: