"It is true that the Fourteenth Amendment having been proposed and submitted prior to the Fifteenth, the provision with reference to reduction of representation in Congress was predicated upon the assumption that the different States could then legally make race or color a ground of discrimination in prescribing the qualification of electors. Still, it occurs to me that if a State could be thus punished for doing that which it had a legal right to do, the same punishment can now be inflicted for doing that which it can no longer legally do. If the plan proposed by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania should be adopted, the Republican party will not only have placed itself on record as having given its sanction to the methods by which these results will have been accomplished, but it will be notice to the different States, north as well as south, that any of them that may see fit to take advantage of their own wrongs will have no occasion to fear any future punishment being inflicted upon the State for so doing. Under the plan thus proposed the State that may thus take advantage of its own wrongs will not only receive no punishment in the reduction of its representation in Congress, but its methods and practices will have been approved and adopted by the Republican party. "On the other hand, the plan I propose is one which is equivalent to a notice to the different States that, while the National Government may not be able to enforce by appropriate legislation the war amendments to the Constitution, the Legislative department of the Government can prevent a State from taking advantage of its own wrongs, through the infliction of a punishment upon the State in the reduction of its representation in Congress. Since representation in the National Convention is based upon the States' representation in Congress, it will be seen that if the representation in Congress from such States should be reduced, it would result in a reduction in the representation from such States in the National Convention. The main purpose, therefore, which the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania seems to have in view will have been practically accomplished, but in a far different and in a much less objectionable way. It will be some satisfaction to southern Republicans, who are denied access to the ballot-box through an evasion of the National Constitution, to know that if they are to be denied a voice in future National Conventions of the party to which they belong, because they are unable to make their votes effective at the ballot-box, the party or State by which they are thus wronged will not be allowed to take advantage of, and enjoy the fruits thereof. They will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that if they cannot vote themselves, others cannot vote for them, and thus appropriate to themselves the increased representation in Congress and in the electoral college to which the State is entitled, based upon their representative strength.