this great lapse of time possibly, the question may settle itself, but during that educational period, while the race is being enlightened and uplifted, governmental ruin would be the result. We reason from the past to the future. The Negro was not fitted for the reins of government. When the government was turned over to him, he fell into the hands of men who, if they were not ignorant, were infinitely worse. And you to whom I am talking have seen the effect of the violation of this fundamental rule. The public debt in your State was increased from $8,000,000 to $25,000,000. The debt of Tennessee was increased by $16,000,000; the debt of Georgia was increased $13,000,000. In less than four months, North Carolina issued $25,000,000 of bonds for railroads. The State debts in the South were increased nearly four hundred millions. Martial law was proclaimed. Every principle of the Magna Charta was thrown to the winds. The sacred rights of habeas corpus were violated. Negro regiments commanded by white renegades took men and women from their homes and incarcerated them in jail without warrant of law. Men were returned for the highest offices in the land without the pretence of an election. In the State of my birth, I have seen a judge on the bench who had never looked into a law book deciding questions of life and death. I have seen a Negro clerk holding that important position when he could not sign his name to the records. I have seen Negro officers sworn to protect the law when their whole

official lives were engaged in protecting the lawbreaker and the scoundrel. Onerous laws were passed by the legislatures, honest debts were repudiated and dishonest ones created, personal liberty was ruthlessly violated, a reign of terror was witnessed throughout the length and breadth of the land. All of these evils came from the violation of the fundamental principle that the government of the state should be in the hands of the intelligent.

It is not my purpose to open old wounds or to bring back unpleasant memories or to stir up race animosities. It is my desire alone in the view I am taking to make the position of the Southern man plain and clear to the thinking world. The ignorant Negro is not properly qualified to cast a vote, and neither is the ignorant white man. As my distinguished friend, W. H. Baldwin, a Northern man, who more thoroughly than any one in the North whom I know understands this question, says: "When the Negro was freed under the constitution, he was given equal rights with the white citizens; suffrage was thrust upon him. This was injurious to him as well as to the white man. not ready for it, and he could not use it intelligently. From this cause alone the difficulties of the problem have been infinitely increased. How could we hope that it would be successful? After thirty-five years, we find the Negro practically disfranchised in many of the Southern States, and he should be if he is not properly qualified to cast a vote; but his qualifications

He was

should be determined in exactly the same manner as the qualifications of the white man; and to this the Negro has no objection. The legal right of the Negro to vote has been the only serious cause of hostility on the part of the Southern white man. The Negro is the friend of the white man in all matters except politics; but in politics he has seldom joined forces with his white neighbors for the common interest of the community in which he lives. If the time comes when the Negro is sufficiently educated, sufficiently intelligent to deal with political questions purely as questions relating to the community in which he lives, and without regard to sentimental party lines, he will receive more reasonable consideration from the whites in the South. Now is the time when he should recognize this opportunity."

This is our great trouble. Under the constitution as it stands, ignorant numbers in many States give the right of control of the State government. This may be true as a matter of statute law, but it is against the great fundamental principle of the best government of the State and the preservation of the people, and whereever this principle meets the statute law of the land, the statute law will surely be broken to pieces. The higher law will always rule without regard to statutes and limitations.

Salus populi suprema est lex.

The political question has practically brought about

the acute trouble between the races. It has debauched the ballot-box and has terrorized both the white and the Negro. It is not alone debauching to the Negro but to the white man in the South. To allow the Negro the vote to which his numbers in many cases entitle him means the ruin of the State, and to take away from him that statute right means the violation of the laws of the land, a position the horrors of which should appeal to every man who loves his country and believes in perpetuating its institutions and keeping its laws unbroken. The South stands ready to give the Negro every right granted by the laws, but it exacts that as a condition the substantial political control of the State must be kept with the white man as the more intelligent. Then, how can this danger be eliminated without casting upon the disfranchised the odium such as usually applies to those generally excluded by the suffrage statute? How can we place the disfranchised so that with their own efforts they may become voters ? The South desires the best interest of the Negroes, and desires to give them the franchise when they are sufficiently intelligent to properly use it. Thus, we are brought to the proposition that there is but one plan to enable us to be honest to the Negro, preserve the statute laws and at the same time save unharmed the great fundamental law of the preservation of the State. That is, to do away with the enforced debaucheries of the ballot, settle the question by inaugurating the highest and most efficient plan of education for the Negro

and by confining the ballot to the intelligent citizen, white or black. If this is adopted, it should be carried out impartially and absolutely, and under this plan the interference with any intelligent voter, white or black, should be visited with the most rigorous penalties known to the law. The glory of the State would be in its intelligent voting population, and the disgrace and dishonor of the State would be in taking from any member of that intelligent voting citizenhood the right to cast his vote in any manner he may desire. The limiting the vote in this manner, I insist, should fall impartially upon the intelligent voter, whatever may be his color. The ignorant white voting population of the South is practically as dangerous to her institutions as the ignorant voter in the Negro ranks. Naturally, however, by reason of the greater number of Negroes in some sections, it would mean, and I frankly say it is intended to mean, the elimination of a great many ignorant Negroes from the franchise. I boldly say

that this is the intention so to do, and the plan of my discussion here to-day is to eliminate the ignorant Negro voter until by education he is able to take an intelligent part in the government of the country. The taking away from the colored voter any part of the electorial franchise which, under the pre-existing state of affairs, belongs to him, carries with it the corresponding proposition that, under such a condition, the government of the State must absolutely assume the protection of the Negro. I am perfectly plain in saying