directly or indirectly to deny or abridge the constitutional right of citizens to vote, or unnecessarily to impede its exercise; if they do they must be declared void."-(Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, p. 602.)

And in reply to objections which had been made to certain registry laws on the ground that they violated the foregoing rule, he says:

"The provision for a registry deprives no one of his right, but is only a reasonable regulation under which the right may be exercised.”—(Ibid. p. 602.)

The arbitrary exclusion of a whole class cannot in any just sense of the term be called a regulation.

The right to vote is not derived from the legislature. It was in the people before the legislature was elected; and had been recognized and regulated by previous legislatures and Constitutional conventions. No legislative assembly or Constitutional convention in this country can be specified previous to which the right of suffrage did not exist. In fact it was by the exercise of that very right that such assembly or convention was called into existence.

If suffrage is a mere privilege, at the discretion of the legislature, then one legislature can deny it to one class of citizens, the next legislature to another, and so on, until our form of government shall have become completely subverted.

Madison declared that it was by a gradual abridgement of the right of suffrage that aristocracies had been built on the ruins of popular forms of government.-(Elliott's Debates, Vol. 5, p. 388.)

The fathers of the Republic looked upon suffrage as a right. Madison called the right of suffrage one of the fundamental articles of a republican government, and thought it ought not to be left to be regulated by the legislature. (Elliot's Debates, Vol. 5. p. 388.) Jefferson said, “Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal rights in election." Payne said, "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected."

Benjamin Franklin said:

"Liberty or Freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws." * "They who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and to their representatives."(Franklin's Works, vol. 2, p. 372.)

Hamilton said:

"A share in the sovereignty of the State, which is exercised by the citizens at large in voting at elections, is one of the most important rights of

the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law. It is that right by which we exist as a free people."-(Hamilton's Works, vol. 2, p. 315.)

The States have full power to regulate the suffrage, so long as they keep within the limits of a reasonable regulation, and do not by an unreasonable one abridge the suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of citizenship, still, so far as Congress is concerned, the Constitution of the United States has itself regulated the question of suffrage, by prescribing the qualifications of voters. [See Art. 1, Sec. 2.] It is true that those qualifications are to be the same as those of voters for the most numerous branch of the State legislature; but that makes no difference. The point is that the Constitution has taken jurisdiction of the question. If it can make the qualifications of voters for Congressmen the same as those of voters for members of the State legislature, then it could also have made them different. By prescribing what the qualifications shall be, it has shown that the United States has voters of its own.

By the very act of forming a government our fathers became citizens of the government they were forming, and as such citizens had a right to participate in that government. But this participation could only be made effectual in one way; by the exercise of the right of suffrage. Thus voting and citizenship became inseparable. And because they did not immediately admit all citizens, to share the suffrage with them, it does not follow, that with them it was not an attribute of citizenship, or that they had a right arbitrarily, or without any good and sufficient reason, to exclude other citizens from the right which they themselves possessed.

They previously had been and still were citizens of the States in which they resided, and as such citizens they there had the right of suffrage. They had not derived it from the State legislatures nor from the State constitutions. The State constitutions are not grants of power or of rights, but mere limitations upon the power of the State legislatures; and all declarations in the State constitutions of the right of suffrage in certain citizens or classes of citizens must be looked upon as equivalent to prohibiting the legislature from preventing such citizens or classes of citizens from voting. It is equivalent to saying that the legislatures may in the exercise of a sound discretion, in regulating the suffrage, exclude, for good reasons, some citizens, (not necessarily all those not mentioned), but that they must not exclude the citizens or classes of citizens specified in the constitutions of their States.

The fallacy consists in assuming that the State constitutions are the

sources of the right of suffrage. Suppose all the State constitutions had been silent upon the subject? Would not the State legislatures still have had the power to regulate the elective franchise as a right inherent in the people? Would the entire machinery of government have been suspended, on the ground that there had been a failure to furnish the necessary motive power for putting it into operation?

Having thus the right of suffrage in the States where they resided, a right not dependent upon any State legislature or constitution, but superior to all of them, when, by virtue of their own act, the people who framed the Federal Constitution became citizens of the United States they at once had the right of voting for members of the national legislature; a right that could not be taken away by any legislation, State or national.

A State legislature has not such an arbitrary control over the elective franchise that it can rightfully or legally exclude an entire class of citizens from the suffrage so effectually that they can never attain it. The foreigner can become a voter by being naturalized; the infant can become a voter when he arrives at the age of twenty-one. Even a criminal can become a voter by being pardoned and restored to his civil and political rights. But the class of citizens to which the complainant in Minor v. Happersett belonged, could not, under the construction which has prevailed, by any lapse of time or by any act of their own become voters. To justify such an exclusion as this, it would have been necessary to decide not only that the Constitution did not confer the right of suffrage, but that there was no such right whatever in the citizen. The Supreme Court would have hesitated to say that the people who formed this government had no right to participate in it, except as such right should be granted to them by their State legislatures, or by the constitutions which they had framed.

The fact is, that the right of suffrage is, in the last analysis, the principle which lies at the foundation of our government. It is the motive power in its administration, and is necessary to its perpetuity. Any extension of it may be made with safety, especially now since those extensions which may have appeared of doubtful expediency have already been made, while any restriction of it, by denying it to any class of citizens, would be in the direction of an aristocracy, and could only be justified by crime or mental incapacity.

ETHICS OF THE BAR.

We presume our readers will not require us to explain in detail the meaning of the term "an honest lawyer." It has been too long in use in common parlance, "in our first families," to be consigned to the land of myths and romance; too long in the parlor and drawing-room as an honored guest, to be kicked out of the back door as an impostor. It is neither a vaporous negative nor unknown quantity. It is a commodity in which we all have had traffic, and about which we can speak from pleasant, personal experience. The power of association of objects and ideas in the human mind is very strong. We hear a low whistle on a still night, just at the bend of the road, skirted on one side by heavy timber and thick underbrush, and on the other, looking cut on the peaceful graveyard, at the exact spot where Paul Brandon was murdered on the night of February 1, 1866, and by common consent we choose to be uncomfortable. On the other hand, the daily inter-communication of the great masses of men of our large cities, rustic villages and thrifty country places, with the honest toiler of the legal profession, fits the human mind by common consent, naturally, as the snowflakes fall upon and fit into the bosom of mother earth, to adopt such endearing words as "an honest lawyer."

Life, property and personal liberty must be protected and crime and injustice prevented, either through the agency of lynch law, bordering on mob violence, or through the interposition of mechanically organized legal tribunals.

Lynch law as . system is a failure; because passion supplants prudence; prejudice dominates reason. Imagination comes first, fact second, truth last. Spite, personal interest, revenge, like angry flames in a whirlwind, consume man's dearest, richest treasures, leaving naught but the gray, smoldering ashes—the black, blistered walls of ruin. Impulse is an unstable court, with a dangerous jury, treacherous witnesses and dreaded executioner.

History furnishes overwhelming and revolting proofs of the hardships, crimes and outrages committed by men "taking the law in their own hands."

Lynch law, executed by a wild, excited, prejudiced, inflamed and passionate mob is a failure, and worse than a failure; it is too dark and dangerous for the darkest age or the most barbarous nations. Stimulated by baseless suspicion, guided by false rumor directed by distorted imagination, incensed by passion, and void of reason, truth, unseen, is trampled under foot. The innocent suffer, the guilty escape, justice is cheated.

All civilized countries, ir acknowledgment of the inability of mob law to do justice as between man and man, to protect the innocent and punish the guilty, to preserve life, home and property, to give confidence, stability and perpetuity in and to human rights and human institutions, have wisely adopted codes of laws for the punishment of the guilty and the protection of the innocent, at the same time specifying and marking out the mode whereby such laws shall be invoked, interpreted and administered.

Whether all laws so enacted are the wisest and best that can be known or conceived, or whether the modes whereby they are interpreted and enforced are perfect, are not questions for us here to consider. Law, like plants, like our bodies, like all animate nature, like all literature, science and theology, is qualifiedly a thing of growth and decay, the qualification being that in law there are certain broad and universal and immutable truths, principles and axioms applicable to all ages and all conditions of man; while aside from this, as society advances, as human institutions, countries, states and municipalities change, as commerce, agriculture and invention broaden, as