of the fundamental principle vitalizing the government. I appeal to the historic past as the unerring guide to the future. I am reminded that the power of the Great Republic stretches this year into two hemispheres; that in ships and money and all of the elements of power and grandeur and civilization since the morning stars sang together she has not had her equal. Permit me, sir, to recall to you that the real impairment of the integrity of the governing principle of every historic state dated from the brightest splendor of its existence and not from the hour of its weakness. I call from the solemn past the phantom memories of Greece and Judea and kingly Rome. When the silks and purple and fine linen of Tyre and Sidon were in every market-place, and the light of the star of the Blessed Redeemer was already touching with its holy fires the lofty towers of the Temple of the Living Jehovah, Judea was stricken. When the genius of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Euripides held in mortal thrall the intelligence of the world, and the statue of Pallas Athenæ and the columned Parthenon looked down on the Piræus, filled with the ships from the Euxine, the Ægean, and from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and when the glory from Salamis and Thermopyla thrilled the people and lighted up the beacons of Democracy on Naxos and Delos and the Islands of the Sea, Greece was stricken. When her arms extended from Dacia to the Desert of Libya, and the thunderous tread of her legions shook the

known world, and her mariners plucked the fruit from the mystic Garden of the Hesperides, and the oar-beat of her triremes shook the mist of the Hyperborean Seas, and Gaul and Scythian and Christian appealed to her royal power, Rome was stricken.

But, sir, the student of the philosophy of government points to the important distinction that Rome and Greece were guarded by the genius of the philosophers, and Judea by the patriarchs, the prophets, and the lawgivers, but that neither Greece nor Rome nor Judea was illumined by the Master, upon whose teachings are founded the principles of the modern state. In reply, sir, Holland, a modern state, is an illustration of the immutable rule that, whether under the teachings of the brows encircled by the chaplet of ivy and laurel or by the Crown of Thorns, the basic principle of civil life controlling the state cannot be impaired without ultimate ruin. Under the inspiration of religion, uplifted by the genius of freedom, grasping the great principle of representative union of Hansetown and Provence, defying Spain, establishing her colonies in all the earth, bidding fair to become a great, abiding, historic people and divide with England the control of the commercial and civilizing influences of the world, Holland, intoxicated with power, forgot the basic principle which made her great, and sank to the rank of a lesser national power having no future historic importance.

Then, sir, reasoning from the past, with all the

intensity of my life, I plead for the maintenance, in its original integrity, of the underlying principle of our Republic. It is supremely vital to liberty. Dethrone the principle from its high estate, and the temple of Liberty is already tottering. Political apostasy is terrible in its reach and grasp of power and in the quick emulation of its example. The infraction of the right of franchise, the impairment of the constitutional right of the citizen to exercise the franchise in South Carolina or in Alabama, provoke the desire and willingness to commit the same wrong in the populous city of New York or in Pennsylvania. The passing of enactments at Montgomery or Charleston, interfering with and restricting the franchise against the spirit of the Constitution and its amendments, provokes the terror of the Force Bill in the National House and Senate. The impairment of the constitutional right in the States causes equal emulation for the destruction of our constitutional guarantees by laying the hand of political apostasy upon the Constitution of the United States.

"Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the strength of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

Men desiring to grasp unconstitutional power heed little the cry of a people that any infraction of that

great instrument by them was caused by the overweening necessity of preserving their civilization from destruction. At this transition period of the world's history, the conservative forces of the country should be on their guard to save the Republic from any impairment of its fundamental principles. The times are surely propitious for such injury to our governing principle, and the example of its infraction too recent to brook denial. The growth of the sentiment that the Constitution is what the majority of the people wish it to be, the growing power of wealth and class in the elections, the increasing control of the central government and its gradual infringement upon the rights of the States, the overweening power of the Federal Courts upon every pretext seeking to control State tribunals and exercise jurisdiction never contemplated by the Constitution, the lessening respect for the elective franchise, and the want of regard for the dignity of the States, sadly illustrated to-day by the warring governments of a free commonwealth, all show the vital demand for the jealous care of the Constitution in all of its original vigor.

Now, sir, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, "That the right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," is as much a part and parcel of the organic law governing this country as any section of the Constitution. Whether wisely or