133. SUFFRAGE OF THE CHINESE.

When the suffrage amendment passed by the House was under discussion by the Senate, February 3, 1869, Mr. Corbett of Oregon submitted the following addition: "But Chinamen not born in the United States and Indians not taxed should not be deemed or made citizens." The amendment was, how. ever, rejected by the Senate on the 9th of the month.

Within a month after the submission to the States of the suffrage amendments, Mr. Johnson, of California, moved in the House that the rules be suspended to enable him to submit the following resolution: "Resolved, That in passing the resolution for the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution the United States the House never intended that Chinese or Mongolians should become voters." The House, however, refused to suspend the rules by a vote of 42 yeas to 106 nays.

134. WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.

3

The first attempts to amend the Constitution so that the right of suffrage should be extended to women were made when the reconstruction amendments were before Congress. Upon the 23d of January, 1866, Mr. Brooks of New York, after presenting a petition from several thousand woman suffragists, gave notice of his intention to introduce an amendment to the resolution then pending, by inserting the word "sex" after the word "color," so that this portion of the amendment should read: "That whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color or sex, all persons therein of such race or color or sex shall be excluded from the basis of representation."4 In each of the following years, until the early seventies, one or more amendments were proposed, the terms of which involved the extension of the franchise to women. Two of these deserve further notice. Mr. Brooks again, in 1869, championed the cause of woman's suffrage, by offering as a substi tute for the suffrage amendment a very singular proposition in these words: "The right of any person of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of his or her race, sex, nativity, or age

2

App., No. 1265.

* App., No. 1322. The constitution of California of 1879 expressly withholds the right

of suffrage from natives of China. Art. XIX of the Constitution makes other discriminations against them.

3 Amendment in regard to the apportionment of Representatives.

4 App., No. 1085.

"App., Nos. 1197, 1239, 1245, 1251, 1269, 1289, 1319, 1327, 1348.

when over twelve years, color or previous condition of slavery of any citizen or class of citizens of the United States." This resolution was not brought to a vote.

During the consideration of the suffrage amendments in the Senate, Senator Pomeroy of Kansas made an ineffectual attempt to substitute for the House amendment and the Senate amendment, respectively, an article of such liberal terms that the enfranchisement of women must follow its adoption. It was as follows: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote and hold office shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State for any reason not equally appliable to all citizens."3 The animus of the proposition is seen in a mark made by Mr. Pomeroy: "I have studied this form of government to no purpose if its logic does not lead me to universal and impartial suffrage."

The first of another series of amendments on the same subject made its appearance in 1878; twelve resolutions to extend the right of suffrage to women have since been introduced into Congress, six in the Senate and six in the House. The first of these was presented by Senator Sargent of California, in 1878. Senators Lapham of New York and Blair of New Hampshire, and Congressman Reed of Maine, have each presented a woman's suffrage amendment twice. Usually these resolutions have been reported back by the committee to which they have been referred with extended reports both from the majority and minorty. Since 1882 these resolutions in the Senate have been referred to the Select Committee on Woman's Suf rage. The amendment submitted by Senator Blair in the first session of the Forty-ninth Congress, was finally brought to a vote in the second session and rejected, 16 yeas to 34 nays. The last amendment on this subject was presented in 1888 by Mr. Mason of Illinois, "by request." It contains the singular provision of extending the right of suffrage to "widows and spinsters," presumably on the ground that there is no voter to represent their interests.

'App., No. 1251.

To amend the House amendment February 3, 1869; to amend the Senate amendment January 29, 1869.

3 App., Nos. 1269, 1289.

4 App., Nos. 1458, 1504, 1506, 1560, 1561, 1580, 1590, 1636, 1671, 1689, 1700, 1723.

5 Reported favorably in 1884. Senate Report No. 399, Forty-eighth Congress, first session. App., No. 1636.

6

7 App., No. 1723. In Wyoming and the recently admitted State of Utah, women have full suffrage. In Colorado, in 1893, the people voted in favor of general woman suffrage. Women

135. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE SUFFRAGE.

The principle of leaving to the States the determination of the qualifications for the franchise has in general approved itself. The only deviation from this principle is in the case of the fifteenth amendment, which was the outcome of great political causes.

The fifteenth amendment was framed not because of any feeling of dissatisfaction with the working of the old system, but to meet the exigencies of the time-the enfranchisement of the negro. At present there is no disposition to extend, or even to enforce the extension of the fifteenth amendment by additional amendments. Since the adoption of the last amendment the number of proposals has been small. The only considerable movement to secure an additional amendment comes from the woman suffragists. There is no popular demand for a further extension of the franchise.

Although there is some uneasiness on account of the increase in the naturalization of foreigners, no amendment to restrict the rights of naturalized citizens has been proposed sine 1858. Possibly the propositions of recent years forbidding the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of nativity, were called out by the fear that at some future time the States might pass laws discriminating against citizens of foreign birth.

136. PRESENT STATUS OF PERSONAL RIGHTS.

The freedom of the individual is now completely assured, and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments stand as an unalterable statement of the fact. There has been no effort to secure a new amendment on this subject. Slavery and the questions arising out of its abolition have given rise to more than five hundred of the amendments proposed, but happily the subject has now passed out of politics.

The possession of the legal rights of suing and being sued, and kindred rights, leads to but little trouble, and has called out few amendments. Citizenship is still a troublesome question. The complications of national and State citizenship have

formerly voted in the Territory of Washington, but do not possess general suffrage under the State constitution. In a limited way, mainly as to taxation or the selection of school officers, woman suffrage exists in twenty-four other States and two Territories. For woman's suffrage in New Jersey under the Constitution of 1776, see Foster, Com. on the Const., I, p. 320, note 4.

1 There has been, however, a movement to enforce by law the provision of the amendment. The latest phase of this movement was the Federal election bill in the Fifty-first Congress.

not been sufficiently cleared up by the fourteenth amendment, nor are the rights of citizens protected by national legislation, except from the aggression of the States. Although the decisions of the Supreme Court in regard to the scope of the amendments have been a great disappointment to the framers of the reconstruction amendments, it is probably better that the States should be the repositories of these rights; at any rate, it is certain that the temper of the country is such, that at present, the States would not accept any further Constitutional amendment on this subject.

A great advance was made in the settlement of the question of personal rights by the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, and the subject is not likely to be reopened by amendment either for their extension or restriction.

137. FINANCIAL POWERS-EARLY OBJECTIONS.

No influence so strongly contributed to the establishment of the Constitution as the financial helplessness of the Confederation. In endowing the new Government with adequate powers of taxation, the new instrument excited the jealousy of the States and led to the suggestion of a large number of amendments in the State ratifying conventions.

(1) The first series of demands looked to the publication of an annual report of the national finances. The conventions of Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island desired that an amendment should be added to the Constitution making more definite the clause in that instrument, requiring the accounts of the public money to be published from time to time, by providing that such accounts should be published at least once a year. The same proposition was advanced in the Senate during the first session of Congress, but that body failed to see that there was any more need of a constitutional provision in this case than there was in regard to the annual publication of the journals of Congress. The fact that such documents have been published throughout the one hundred years at regular intervals proves that they were right in both cases.

(2) The very word "excise" was disagreeable to our forefathers, bringing before them recollections of the most unpopular English tax; therefore it is not surprising to find that the New York convention included in its series of proposed amendments one declaring that Congress shall not impose any

App., Nos. 31, 83, 114.

2 App., No. 276. Ante, par. 18.

excise on any article the growth, production, or manufacture of the United States, ardent spirits excepted.' The early Congresses, so far from heeding the suggestion, under Hamilton's direction, laid an excise; in 1794 the tax brought about the well-known whisky insurrection.

(3) The New York and Rhode Island conventions desired the Constitution to be so amended that no money should be borrowed without the consent of two-thirds of the members present in each House of Congress." The restriction had nothing to recommend it, and the proposition does not again appear.

(4) The same conventions likewise proposed an amendment prohibiting Congress from ever laying a capitation or poll tax.3 No such tax has ever been laid and an amendment would therefore have been superfluous.

(5) The two States of North Carolina and Rhode Island, that delayed their ratification of the Constitution and entrance into the Union-conscious of their own sins in the emission of paper money-proposed through their respective conventions an amendment expressly stipulating "that Congress shall not, directly or indirectly, either by themselves or through the judiciary, interfere with any one of the States in the redemption of paper money already emitted and now in circulation, or in liquidating or discharging the public securities of any one of the States, but each State shall have the exclusive right of making such laws and regulations for the above purpose as they think proper." A short time after this, it will be remembered, the central Government assumed the States' debts in accordance with Hamilton's scheme. The general principle of this proposition has been approved as warranted by the Constitution in the decision of the Supreme Court in the Virginia coupon cases."

(6) Among the radical changes proposed by Mr. Tucker of South Carolina, in the First Congress, was one by which the States, instead of being prevented from laying duties on imports or exports, except where absolutely necessary for executing its

'App., No. 47.

2 App., Nos. 53, 116.

3 App., Nos. 60, 111.

4 See ante, p. 156, note 2. McMaster, 1, pp. 285-286; 331–341.

5 App., Nos. 102, 106.

6 Virginia Coupon Cases, 114 U. S., 269.

H. Doc. 353, pt 2—16