Speech #870189744

In fact such a plan was considered by the Constitutional Convention itself. but it received the vote of only one CommonwealthDelaware. "The provision made by the convention appears to be the best that lay within their option." The "fathers" were satisfied for the States to continue to make their own suffrage tests. rather than to further prolong the convention and so further endanger the rather slim chances of ratification by the several Coinmonwealths. The prospect in the convention itself was anything but promising. Even Franklin moved to call in a person that they might invoke the "assistance of Heaven." The Constitution conferred the franchise on no one. Likewise citizenship does not bestow suffrage. either upon the natural born or the naturalized alien. The several States have the unqualified right to impose qualifications and regulate suffrage subject only to the limitations in the amendments referred to above. In handing down the decision in the case of Corfield v.