indissoluble part of that man. But his education, his registration, his
residence, his payment of a portion of the burdens of the State, and the
other matters, are in his power and his control. I find it to be in
accord with the wisdom of the people of the country that it is the true
policy to let the States govern those matters for themselves. The
Constitution of the United States touches those things that are out of
the man's control."

In the filibustering contest over the rules in the Forty-seventh
Congress, first session, Mr. Robinson made a very earnest speech, which
commended itself to all except the extreme filibusters. Stripping the
contest of its technical parliamentary points, Mr. Robinson said: "Our
rules are for orderly procedure, not for disorderly obstruction; not for
resistance." Continuing he said that no tyranny is one-half as odious as
that which comes from the minority. "Our fathers," he said, "put our
Government upon the right of the majority to rule." To the charge of one
of the minority that the purpose of the majority to proceed to the
consideration of the election cases was tyranny, Mr. Robinson said:

"Tyranny! Because the majority of this House proposes to go forward to
action in a way that, upon their oaths, they declare to be right and
proper, and in their judgment is to be vindicated, you say that is
tyranny! But it is not tyranny for you in a minority forsooth to say,
unless it goes just the way we want it, it shall not go at all. That is
to say, in the language that you have thrown out here and have
fulminated in the caucus, you will sit here till the expiration of this
Congress rather than you shall not have your way. I commend to my friend
some other dictionary in which he will find a proper definition of the
word tyranny."