Such is the exposition of the actual Constitution by Hamilton. According to him, “If the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants.” But this very hour has sounded. The laws have restored the rights which had been taken away, and it is now your duty to see that the people who have regained their rights are no longer refused an equal share of representation. The opinion of Hamilton on this vital question is still further attested by his saying that the liberty for which our fathers fought was the right of “each individual” to “a share in the government”;[262] that “the electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States”;[263] and still further, by the proposition in his Plan of a Constitution:—
“Representatives shall be chosen, except in the first instance, by the free male citizens and inhabitants of the several States comprehended in the Union, all of whom, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, shall be entitled to an equal vote.”[264]
In this proposition, which, though not adopted in terms, may be regarded as the pole-star of our fathers, the distinguished author followed the Continental Congress, which recommended the apportionment of the war expenses among the “free citizens and inhabitants,” without distinction of color.[265]
This rule is in entire conformity with that matured by ancient experience, especially in Greece, where, according to the universal master, Aristotle,—
“The whole body of the inhabitants of a country enjoying the protection of its laws, including the young who are still under the legal age, and the very old who have passed the time of action, and all others under any other species of disability, are in a certain wide and general sense citizens; but the full and complete definition of a citizen is confined to those who participate in the governing power.”[266]
Proving, as I have, that colored persons are citizens, this very definition teaches that they cannot be refused participation in the governing power.
The historian Thirlwall, in his studies of Greek polity, recognized this rule, when he wrote:—
“But a finished democracy, that which fully satisfied the Greek notion, was one in which every attribute of sovereignty might be shared, without respect to rank or property, by every freeman.”[267]
In recognizing the right of “every freeman” to the full enjoyment of the elective franchise, our fathers followed the early example.