The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-05
The suHrng Question Ag0In-Th View
TOT Ihhddems sLevens Upon It.

power
The Suffrage Question AgSIn-Ths view,
tot ThNddeus stevens Upon IL.
FTom The ". y Times.
It is very evident that the radical leaders
intend to commit the Republican party to the
new doctrine of national suffrage, and thus 10
force it upon the country. The pretentious
pronunciamento of Mr.. Stevens, the bills and
speeches of Mr.. Sumner, the passionate de-
mands of Wendell Phillips, the ground taken
and the language used by the Tribune, the
Washington Chronicle, and other radical
organs leave no room to doubt that Congress
will be called on to enact a law stripping the
States of all control over the suffrage and de-
claring who may aud who may not vote in
every State of the Union. And, of course,
the first effort will be to force this upon the
Republican party, and compel every one who
desires TO rank as ''good Republican" and
to escape condemnation as a Copperhead and
Rebel, to give it his support.
The ground on which Mr. Stevens attempts
to base this movement is simply absurd. lie
asserts that "the elective franchise ranks with
life and liberty in its sacred, inalienable char
acter''-that the authors of the Declaration of
Independence so regarded it,, and that our
fathers "intended" to create continental en-
pire, based upon that principle AS matter
of historical fact, this assertion is utterly un-
true. There is not particle of evidence to
show that the trainers of our Government had
any such intentions, or held any such opin-
ions. Every form of proof, everything they
did, wrote, and said, cOntradcts and refutes
this false assumption. Everything shows that
the Declaration was not intended to lay the
foundation of any specific government at all,
but only to set forth the principles on which
i .s.,lA H., I'LL
laws for the American Colonies The
first Government formed after indie
pendence was achieved-that of the
Confederation-made not the slightest at
tempt to restrict the control of the
States over the question of suffrage And
when that form was found defective, its defects
had nothing to do with the sutfrage-they re-
lated wholly to other questions; and in the
new Constitution, which was ordained to form
'smore perfect union," the control of the
suffrage acds expressly confirmed to the States
The qualifications for voting for national
officers were declared to be such as the States
should prescribe for voting for members of
the most numerous branch of their own Legis-
latures. These acts, which were deliberate and
explicit, prove the intentions of the actors to
have been precisely the opposite of those which
Mr.. Stevens sees fit to ascribe to them. And
he cannot find in their words, in their writings
VI III oHCOOlOoj any blllllS W give COlOT vi
warrant to his assertion that they intended"
to do anything different from what they
actually did.
But Mr.. Stevens position is not only his
torically false, it, is intrinscally absurd. If
'the elective franchise ranks with life and
liberty in its sacred, inalienable character" ;"
as he says it does, then it must rank with
them also in its universality. Every human
being who has an inalienable right to ''life
and liberty" must also have an inaienabe
right to tho oleotive franchise. No limitations
can be affixed in the one case which do not
belong to the other. Now life and liberty
belong, as sacred, inalienable rights" to
women and children, as well as to men, to
aliens and "Indians not taxed, as we'll as to
citizens; would Mr.. Stevens insist that the
elective franchise belongs to them in the same
way and by the same title He would pro-
badly say that a limit must be fixed some
where for the sake of good government; but
in so saying he surrenders the whole argu-
ment. He comedies that the elective franchise
does not frank with life and liberty in its
sacred, inalienable character" =" because that
can be limited and restricted from motives of
expediency, while they cannot. That may be
taken away from certain great classes of ofhuman
beings, at the mere will of the sovereign
political society-while they cannot That
may be denied to all the women and all the
children-more than fOur-ffths of all the
people, III any ndJlOn-DuL VINO would dream
of denying ''life and liberty to either class
Mr.. Stevens proposition, therefore, the alb
stract principle on which he builds his scheme
of government, his new, reconstructed conti-
mental empire, is not true. The elective fran
chise is not an inalienable right, belonging to
every human being. And if it is not that, it
is not an inalienable right belonging naturally
to any, for there can be no such thing as natu-
raj rights belonging to one class of human
beings that do not belong to ALL The only
thing which makes them natural rights is the
fact that they do belong to all. The idea of
sacred, inalienable, natural right belonging to
man and not to woman-beonging to a
man the day after he is twenty one, and not
the day before-is an absurdity. The elective
franchise is political polCer, created by polit-
cal society-by the organized, established gov
ernment; as a right it exists only as the right
to exercise that power; and that right is CON
ferred by the government which creates the
power.
When Mr.. Stevens says therefore, that this
sacred, inalienable right of voting, was ''sus-
pended" chartered away for the time being"
by the Constitution of the United States, he
talks nonsense. Never having existed as
right, it could not, of course, have been bar
tered away. The trainers of the Constitution
never dreamed Of "suspending this as one of
the muuiments of liberty" partly, perhaps,
because suspended imminent" was some
thing never heard of in those early days, but
mainly because they did not recognize its ex-
istence as a natural aud inalenable right.
What the trainers of the Constitution actually
did was to designate the political authority by
which, under the form of government to be
thus established, the right of voting should
be conferred And they decided that this
right should remain with the States They