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He repeated his prophecy, made on a previous occasion, of the subserviency to the minister which the Irish members might be expected to exhibit, and therefore moved an amendment to reduce the number of Irish representatives to eighty-five; but, to obviate the discontent which such a reduction might be expected to excite in Ireland, he proposed to diminish the number of English members also, by disfranchising forty "of the most decayed boroughs," a step which would leave the number of members in the new united Parliament as nearly as possible the same as it was before.
Clark offered a substitute for the third section the disfranchising clause the following amendment, which, with slight modifications, was ultimately adopted: "That no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or permitted to hold any office under the Government of the United States, who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution thereof, shall have voluntarily engaged in any insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort thereto."
Crime demands justification, and it is not surprising that after such violence as that which we have described, and after several states had passed disfranchising acts, there appeared in the first years of the new century several publications especially defamatory of the race. Some books unfortunately descended to a coarseness in vilification such as had not been reached since the Civil War.
The number of boroughs to be totally disfranchised was slightly greater, that of boroughs to be partially disfranchised slightly less, but the net effect of the disfranchising and enfranchising schedules was the same, and the £10 rental suffrage was retained. The measure was allowed to pass its first reading after one night's discussion.
There is, indeed, a great party which still objects to the disfranchising even of the smallest boroughs. But all the most distinguished chiefs of that party have, here and elsewhere, admitted that the elective franchise ought to be given to some great towns which have risen into importance since our representative system took its present form.
He declared himself ready to vote for an amendment to the constitution of his State bestowing the right of suffrage upon all male citizens without distinction of color who could furnish evidence of their ability to read and write, without, however, disfranchising those who are now voters and are not able to fulfil that condition.
This amendment was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in June, 1915, on the ground that a State cannot reëstablish conditions existing before the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, even though the disfranchising amendment contained no "express words of exclusion" but "inherently brings that result into existence."
The results of the disfranchising clauses of the Act of 1829 are to be seen in the fact that in 1850, while in England the electors were twenty-eight per cent. of the adult male population, in Ireland they were only two per cent. A Bill introduced in that year would, if it had passed into law, have raised the percentage in Ireland to fifteen.
In less than three months, not only was the trouble successfully removed, but the important bills for disfranchising revenue officers and excluding contractors from the House of Commons were carried, and a tremendous blow was thus struck at the corrupt influence of the crown upon elections.
History of Woman Suffrage, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."
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