175. The political privileges of citizenship rest on a different conception of government. Political privileges—of which the most important are the right to vote and the right to be voted for, and to execute an office because of election to office—are not fundamental, that is, they are not civil rights. The State, or the United States, has the right to prescribe qualifications for an elector, or for candidacy for any office. Usually these qualifications are of age, residence, sex, and tax-paying,—the people of the United States having also declared that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This inhibition does not make the fact of race, or color, or previous condition of servitude a fundamental civil right guaranteed by the United States under the Constitution. In no sense does the Fourteenth Amendment confuse civil and political rights. No person can vote unless he or she has complied with the requirements (qualifications) for voting, prescribed by the State in which he or she resides. No person acquires civil rights by a similar compliance. By birth or naturalization (and naturalization is a sort of legal birth by the will of the sovereign), a person possesses civil rights, but no person possesses the privilege of voting either by birth or by naturalization. The privilege of voting may be lost by removing from a polling district; by neglect to register; by neglect to pay a tax,—in brief, by failure to comply with any electoral law of the State; but no person forfeits his or her civil rights by mere neglect. Infants, minors, adults, men, women, and children possess equal civil rights. Impairment, suspension, forfeiture of civil rights is effected only by commission of crime, that is, by a voluntary act, inimical to sovereignty itself. Such an act also cuts off the privilege of voting, or of being voted for with effect of induction into office, because the person who imperils sovereignty by commission of a crime would, in all probability, imperil sovereignty by voting. The exercise of the suffrage has long continued in America, and, both in laws and in constitutions, is commonly referred to as a “right.” The tendency of privileges is to become rights. In America, however, the republican form of government exists both in the States and in the United States. Practically, civil rights and political privileges are determined by the will of the people. Appendix THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (COMPARED WITH THE ORIGINAL IN THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE)