"The proposed change is predicated upon the assumption that elections are fair and returns are honest in all the States at each and every National election. If that were true the difference in the representation from the several States would be unimportant and immaterial, even under the proposed change, hence there would be no occasion for the change. The fact that this assumption is not true furnishes the basis for the alleged inequality in representation, and the apparent necessity for the change proposed. In addition to this it is a well-known fact that in several of the Southern States,--my own, Mississippi, among the number,--the Fifteenth Amendment to the National Constitution has been practically nullified, and that the colored men in such States have been as effectually disfranchised as if the Fifteenth Amendment were not a part of the organic law of the land. If the plan that is now proposed by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania should be adopted, the National Republican party by accepting them and making them the basis of representation in future National Conventions of the party will have thereby placed itself on record as having given its sanction to the questionable methods by which these results have been accomplished. I frankly confess that the plan I have presented is based upon the humiliating confession that the Government is without power under the Constitution as construed by the Supreme Court to effectually enforce the war amendments; and that in consequence thereof nothing is left to be done but to fall back upon the plan prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment, which is to reduce the representation in Congress from such States in the manner and for the purposes therein stated.