Africa. or America. who is twentyone years of age. male or female. to become a voter in that Territory for local purposes. without being even a citizen of the United States. I insist that Congress ought not to allow a people with no higher obligation or closer connection to this Government to frame a constitution under which all the people of all the States who may see fit to go there and make their permanent homes should be required to live. The mere accident. it may be. whereby a few miners have prospected for six months. or a few Canadians or a squad of Chinamen or a few people who have come from any other part of the world and declared their intention to become citizens of the United States. and may never consummate that intention by naturalization. ought not to vest them with power to frame an organic act. merely because the act of the Territorial Legislature provides that they are electors for local purposes in that Territory. It is not. in my .judgment. wise action on the part of Congress to abridge its undoubted right to prescribe who shall and who shall not vote for the proposed constitution merely because it has sanctioned local Territorial laws.extending suffrage to all sorts of people. The people of the whole country have the right to the wisest and best considered constitution that Congress can secure. regardless of the few settlers there now. none of whom have a right to vote for the new constitution. unless we confer that right upon them by this act.
Keywords matched
naturalization