entirely to the States. Whoever, in any State, is permitted to vote for members of the most numerous branch of its legislature, is also competent to vote for Representatives in Congress. The State might require a property qualification, or it might dispense with it. It might permit negroes to vote, or it might exclude them. It might permit women to vote, or even foreigners, and the federal constitution would not be infringed. If a State had provided a different qualification for an elector of Representatives in Congress, from that required of an elector of the most numerous branch of its Legislature, the power of the federal constitution might be invoked, and the law annuled. But never was the idea entertained, that this provision of the Constitution authorizes Congress to pass laws for the punishment of individuals in the States for illegal voting, or State returning officers for receiving illegal votes. This power, if it exist, must be found in the recent Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. I assume that your Honor will hold, as you did yesterday in Miss Anthony's case, that these amendments do not confer the right to vote upon citizens of the United States, and therefore not upon women. That decision is the law of this case. It follows necessarily from that decision, that these amendments have nothing to do with the right of voting, except so far as that right "_is denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude_." The thirteenth article of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, in Section 1, ordains that "_neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction_." Section 2, ordains that "_Congress shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation_." The fourteenth article of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, ordains in Section 1, "_All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State where they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws._" Section five enacts, "_The Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this Article._" The fifteenth article of Amendment to the Constitution ordains in its first section, that "That the right of citizens of the United States to