Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/528

494 Senator from Ohio was not quite justified in waving off so lightly the argument which was employed against him by my friend from Vermont that the Democrats had found that legal machinery not only constitutional, but positively admirable when it was used to enforce the fugitive-slave law, while they denounce it as detestable and infamous now. The Senator from Ohio knows very well that a legal machinery used for a laudable purpose may be very praiseworthy, while it is most reprehensible when used for evil; and so the Senator from Vermont was certainly right when he blamed the Democrats for calling this machinery all possible bad names when it is to be used in the service of the constitutional rights of freemen, while they had upheld it as most rightful and necessary, and denounced everybody as a traitor who would not help in executing it, when it was to serve in the unholy work of returning fugitive slaves, who sought their freedom, to bondage and misery.

But here is another question of interest. Does this bill really take away from the States the power to legislate on the subject? Look at it closely. Does it? Not at all, sir. It leaves the States just as free as they ever were to legislate for the prompt and vigorous enforcement of protection of the right of every voter to the free exercise of the suffrage. Does it not? In that respect it does not impose the least restriction on the power of the States. In that direction the States may go just as far as they please. But the bill does provide that a State shall no longer have the power to swindle any of its citizens out of their rights.

A State shall have full power to do that which is right in its own way; but it is prohibited from doing that which is wrong in any way. It is this, I suppose, that Democrats will insist upon calling an arbitrary limitation of State rights. Or is it true, what is asserted also, that