I shall not attempt to discuss the minor and infinitely varied details of this important question. I shall rather briefly, and in my humble way, found my argument upon the basic principles of our national existence, and upon some general principles, and not waste your time in assaulting the outworks of the citadel.

The settlement of this franchise question lies deep upon the very foundation-stones of the Republic, and only by laying bare to the people's view those mighty substructures can we here efficiently serve our country.

Every historic state is underlaid with a fundamental principle, from which it breathes its life and through which it has its civil existence. Each of our colonies had its peculiar idea of government; but after they were bound in one glorious, shining union of States, A that great principle of civil philosophy, the right of the people to govern through its own suffrage, shone as the glory of heaven. The State became the sovereign through the power of its own people, and the preservation of its liberty was predicated upon the people.

Therefore, I assert that the constitutional exercise of the right of franchise is the vital and underlying principle of the life of this free people, and that the infraction of this principle is surely attended with ultimate ruin to our system of republican government. 'In democracy, there can be no exercise of sovereignty but by the suffrages of the people which are their will.”

Sir, this is fundamental, and, in this splendid presence, it but needs expression to receive assent. Stripped of

every covering, it is but the annunciation of the right of the people to choose their servants, indicate their policy, and live under the laws they themselves have created. When you depart from this principle, you forsake the underlying principle of national government; and when this is done, surely you drop out of the nations which exercise an abiding power upon civilization.

To enable our country to consummate its destiny, this vital principle, at the risk of weariness of expression, must be kept close to the hearts of the people. It is the golden thread, which at every stage of our national existence, through storm and battle and change, has been held by the patriots to inhere into the very texture of national life. When this principle is abandoned or impaired,

"Our own

Like free states foregone, is but a bright leaf torn
From Time's dark forest, and on the wide gust thrown
To float a while, by varying eddies borne;
And sink at last forever!"

Says Montesquieu: "It is plain, then, that if the government, whether State or Federal, controls or disposes of suffrage, or allows it to be disposed of, without warrant in the Constitution, it strikes at the very vitals of the republic from which it derives its entire existence and power."

In all the ages, the ruin of free nations has been wrought through the insidious sapping and impairing

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 Thermopyle 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