In further discussion of the extent to which the pardon of the President goes, Mr. Reverdy Johnson cited a case which had just been argued by himself and others but was not yet decided, in the Supreme Court of the United States, as to whether an attorney in that court could be bound to take the ironclad oath as prescribed by Act of Congress, January 24, 1865. He had no doubt, he said, that the operation of the pardon was to clear the party pardoned from the obligation to take that oath. The case referred to was that since so widely known as _ex parte_ Garland, and decided by the Supreme Court adversely to the Constitutionality of the statute. Mr. Howe of Wisconsin interrupted the senator from Maryland and asked him whether he knew "of any authority which has gone to the extent of declaring that either an amnesty or a pardon can impose any limitation whatever upon the power of the people of the United States, through an amendment to their Constitution, to fix the qualifications of officers." Mr. Johnson replied, "That is not the question to which I spoke. It is quite another inquiry. I was speaking of the operation of a _statute._" Mr. Doolittle also answered his colleague by saying, "I know it may be said that by an amendment to the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, you can annul all existing rights. You could, perhaps, by an amendment to the Constitution, enact a provision which would deprive individual citizens of their property, and vest the whole of it in the Government of a State or in the Government of the United States. You might, perhaps, by a Constitutional amendment, pass a bill of attainder by which certain men would be sentenced to death and to corruption of blood. But, sir, would it be right? That is the question." Mr. Doolittle was discussing it on the ground of its moral rightfulness and not upon the ground of the power of the people to amend their Constitution. An attempt was made to insert the word "voluntarily" in the amendment, so that only those would be under disabilities who had voluntarily taken part in the Rebellion; but this received only ten votes. The Senate rejected it for the obvious reason that it would open the entire amendment to evasion.