Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
State Practice
Petitioners attempt to overcome this formidable array of evidence against the States' power to impose qualifications by arguing that the practice of the States immediately after the adoption of the Constitution demonstrates their understanding that they possessed such power. One may properly question the extent to which the States' own practice is a reliable indicator of the contours of restrictions that the Constitution imposed on States, especially when no court has ever upheld a state-imposed qualification of any sort. See supra, at 798-799. But petitioners' argument is unpersuasive even on its own terms. At the time of the Convention, "[a]lmost all the State Constitutions required members of their Legislatures to possess considerable property." See Warren 416-417.33 Despite this near uniformity, only one
because the voters of Arkansas, in adopting Amendment 73, were acting as citizens of the State of Arkansas, and not as citizens of the National Government. The people of the State of Arkansas have no more power than does the Arkansas Legislature to supplement the qualifications for service in Congress. As Chief Justice Marshall emphasized in McCulloch, "Those means are not given by the people of a particular State, not given by the constituents of the legislature, . . . but by the people of all the States." 4 Wheat., at 428-429.
The dissent concedes that the people of the Nation have an interest in preventing any State from sending "immature, disloyal, or unknowledgeable representatives to Congress," post, at 869, but does not explain why the people of the Nation lack a comparable interest in allowing every State to send mature, loyal, and knowledgeable representatives to Congress. In our view, the interest possessed by the people of the Nation and identified by the dissent is the same as the people's interest in making sure that, within "reasonable limitations, the door to this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith." The Federalist No. 52, at 326.
33 See, e. g., 7 Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies 3816 (F. Thorpe ed. 1909) (hereinafter Thorpe) (Virginia) (members of state legislature must be freeholders); 4 id., at 2460, 2461 (New Hampshire) (freehold
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