So we start out in the consideration of this bill with this plain. broad defect in its system: it violates the Constitution of our country. Suppose you should go into a Federal court after this bill has passed and file a bill there to enjoin John I. Davenport from arresting eight thousand men who are supposed not to have proper certificates of naturalization. or from taking men arrested in the morning of the election day and penning them up in iron cages. one hundred. and two hundred. and three hundred in a cage. Suppose you were to go into a Federal court and ask that court for an injunction or prohibition against him to prevent him from doing that thing. If the court should hold that the bill was constitutional it would say that Congress bad vested in John L Davenport and the other chief supervisors all the executive power necessary for the enforcement of that law. and we can no more interfere with him than we could in the case of Andrew Johnson where he was executing in the State of Mississippi an alleged unconstitutional law.
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naturalization