It cannot be safely conjectured what the Supreme Court will say when it squarely faces the suffrage laws of the South in their relation to the Fifteenth Amendment. Until then, each is entitled to his opinion. That the citizenship, age, sex, and residence qualifications are in perfect conformity to the Amendment there is no doubt. The qualifications of tax payment, property, and education existed long before the Fifteenth Amendment in the States of the men most active in securing the adoption of that Amendment. It is hardly to be supposed that the Senators and Representatives from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania understood the Amendment they were advocating to be nullifying the suffrage laws of their respective States. Moreover, a property or educational test is not an abridgment or denial of the right to vote, because it lies within the power of everyone, regardless of race, to accumulate property and acquire literacy. The “Grandfather Clauses” are the most doubtful parts of the suffrage laws. In one sense, they are not at all a denial or an abridgment of the right to vote. Granting that the property and educational tests are constitutional, the “Grandfather Clause,” instead of abridging or denying, enlarges the right to vote by giving the suffrage to those who would be disqualified under the property or educational tests. Be that as it may, the Southern States are more uneasy about the constitutionality of these provisions than of any others. For instance, at the last two sessions of the legislature of North Carolina bills were introduced to extend the “Grandfather Clause” of that State to 1812 and 1816 respectively. In each case the bill was defeated, the argument against it being that it was unwise to open up the suffrage question again, lest the amendment be brought into court.[727] A leading thinker on constitutional law has given the unpublished opinion that the “Grandfather Clauses” are in violation of the tenth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States, which says that no State shall grant any title of nobility. His idea is that an order of nobility is created whenever a class of persons is granted exceptional political privileges, that the old soldiers and lineal descendants constitute such a class, and that the title of nobility is “Elector,” whether expressed or not.