The provision of the law on that is thisit is in the statute I have readthat these people who took the oath to support the ConstitutionI mean their preliminary declarationmust take it before some court. Afterward a practice grew up. which. I think. is authorized by statute. that for purposes of naturalization it might be taken before the clerk or a deputy away from the court. Now. it is a very grave question. although that oath might have been taken away from the court for the purpose of naturalization. whether where the statute speaking of the qualification of voters says it must have been taken befbre the court that would do. but it being a question. we did not care to raise it and debate it here as a doubtful question. because this other thing seems to my humble understandingI do not think it is very lawyerlike. or very statesmanlike. or very Senatorial to be too confident in your own judgmentrbut it does seem to my mind that this other proposition is absolutely clear and indisputable. I do not see any method of getting rid of it. and therefore it is not necessary to talk about the question whether these declarations of intention to become citizens of the United States might have been taken before the clerk or his deputy away from the court. The substantial and decisive point is that no Territorial Legislature could clothe an alien with the right to vote unless he had taken the oath to support the Constitution and laws of the United States. and therefore when the constitutional convention of Montana declared that the qualified electors should elect State officers it did not mean. although the judge of that district said he thinks it did. persons who had been enumerated in an old statute of Montana that omitted this recitation. but it meant the persons who were qualified according to the sovereign dominant authority of the prevailing law. a law necessary on all principles of decent. orderly government in this country.
Keywords matched
naturalization