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CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.
sole object of dissolving the Union, create qualifications so high, and so singular, that it shall become impracticable to elect any representative.
§ 624. It would seem but fair reasoning upon the plainest principles of interpretation, that when the constitution established certain qualifications, as necessary for office, it meant to exclude all others, as prerequisites. From the very nature of such a provision, the affirmation of these qualifications would seem to imply a negative of all others. And a doubt of this sort seems to have pervaded the mind of a learned commentator.[1] A power to add new qualifications is certainly equivalent to a power to vary them. It adds to the aggregate, what changes the nature of the former requisites. The house of representatives seems to have acted upon this interpretation, and to have held, that the state legislatures have no power to prescribe new qualifications, unknown to the constitution of the United States.[2] A celebrated American statesman,[3] however, with his avowed devotion to state power, has intimated a contrary doctrine. "If," says he,whenever the constitution assumes a single power out of many, which belong to the same subject, we should consider it as assuming the whole, it would vest the general government with a mass of powers never contemplated. On the contrary, the assumption of particular powers seems an exclusion of all not assumed. This reasoning appears to me to be sound, but on so recent a change of view, caution requires us not to be over confident.[4]
