The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-01-23

vested in congress, to be executed by
| appropriate legislation.
Fourth. when congress exer-
cises this power directly against a state
it is expressly limited II the right to
| reduce the basis of ap-portionment of
such state in the proportion that the
number of negroes that are excluded
from voting by the state laws bear to
the whole numbe of male citizens q
years Of age in such state.
Fifth. Whether the fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments repeal or modify
the fourth section of article l of the
original constitution as to the legisla-
ton that congress nay provide for the
especial protection of negro suffrage is
a question that does not concern what
congress may do in the enforcement of
those amendments.
Sixth. But in all the provisions of
the constitution touching the subject
of elections uone of them are self-exe-
cutting as against the states concerned.
AS to the states, and as to any penal
ties or remedies that can be enforced
against them, no power exists in any
department of the government, except
congress, through appropriate legisla-
ton"
If the reader will study what is thus
presented he will have no trouble in
understanding what congress and the
supreme court can do, and can not do.
Let the congress be independent in the
matter of the amendments then it is
not within the mower of the highest
judiciary TO intervene or to act. The
eminent senator and lawyer says that
IF congress refuses to act, neither
the courts, through any writ or decree,
nor the executive, through any force
confided to IL, can take a single step
toward compelling the obedience of a
state to the fourteenth or fifteenth
amendments.
IF acts of congress enforce these
amendments and individuals are af-
fected by them or by state laws which
they ~contravene, they operate, as do all
other provisions of the constitution, to
test the validity of such acts, and the
courts can decide AS TO their validity
and enforce it where they have juris-
diction of the parties. To this extent
and in this way all the provisions of
the constitution are se~lf-executing."
If this does not spike the little Ten
n~esseean's gun then we have drawn a
wrong conclusion. Possibly aided by
the great Sampson county legal lumi-
nary of first magnitude, Marion Butler,
late a law student at Chapel Hill, he
may be able to overthrow the Ala
bamian's contention and exposition and
with it overthrow the statehood Of
North Carolina and put all the sure
enough white folks into a territorial
condition to be ruled and bossed by
Russell's faithful "savages" and by
such officers as may be appointed from
Washington. But the supreme court
Wi not be swift to follow such blind
legal leadership and will-o-the-wisps as
Tennessee Jeter and Sampson Butler.
For the great senator farther says
1T is quite a different question when
the courts or the executive undertake
to enforce the constitution against a
state, in any form of procedure, when
congress has not defined the offense or
provided a penalty. That is simply i'm
possible. And congress can infiict no
penalty on a state for refusing suffrage
to negroes except nat which is provid-
ed in the fourteenth amendment.
THAT amendment by a necessary i'm
plication, prevents ongre from driv-
ing a state out of the union or from re-
manding it to territorial condition for
refusing suffrage to negroes. And by
clause :. of section 2, of the constitu-
ton which provides that each state
shall haye at least one Representative
in the house; and by the provision in
article (which cannot be
that no state, without it's consent, shall
be deprived of its equal suffrage in n
senate no state can be destroyed or
expelled by act of congress-"