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government, subordinate to the constitution is absolute over the departments, and can control, according to its will and pleasure, all others. It would be to assign limits to legislative power by constitutional provisions, restraining the legislative body within certain bounds, and then to declare, that, although it had passed beyond the limits assigned to its power, and violated the authority designed to govern it, yet that its action is valid and of binding force and obligation upon the other departments of government, and has the effect to take away the very rights from the people, which they have secured to themselves by constitutional provisions. A doctrine too monstrous to be for a moment entertained; and in every way disconsonant to the fundamental principles and theories upon which our government is based, and one which in practice would soon sweep away every vestige of the rights of the people, and reduce them to subjection to absolute power, or what would be worse to a state of anarchy and confusion, where life, property and every right would be left to the mercy of the legislative power.

With these principles before us, we will proceed to determine whether the act of the legislature of the state of Arkansas, under which the plaintiffs in error justify their conduct in refusing to permit the plaintiff, below to vote, is a constitutional law; for if so, it is valid and binding, and the plaintiff below had no right to vote, and was deprived of nothing which belonged to him: but upon the contrary, if the law relied upon by the defendants below is repugnant to the constitution of this state, then it is void, and can afford them no justification or excuse for what they did.

Section 2 of article 4 of the constitution of the state of Arkansas, provides that "every free white male citizen of the United States who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and who shall have been a citizen of the state six months next preceding the election, shall be deemed a qualified elector, and be entitled to vote in the county or district where he actually resides."

The plaintiff below, by his declaration avers that he was