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 Corfleld v. Coryell. Judge Washington in enumerating the privileges and immunities that are usually associated with citizenship. said: "To which is to be added the elective franchise. as regulated and established by the laws or constitutions of the State in which it is exercised." Mr. President. one of the finest arguments which has yet been made with regard to the constitutionality of the socalled literacy test proposals was presented on April 10 of this year before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a Virginian. Frederick T. Gray.
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literacy test naturalized