s tyrannical which is tyrannically
administered, but all governments are tyrannical which have not
in their constitution a sufficient security against arbitrary
power.--_Burgh's Pol. Disquis._, 378.

Passing from these grievances, applicable to the whole Union, I
approach what is to my apprehension the most unmatchable outrage ever
inflicted by a civilized people. Some acts, like the partition of
Poland, stand out on the pages of history as disgraceful national
crimes; but most of them shade into minor offences compared with the
crime-breeding, race-endangering, liberty-imperiling savagery of
conferring the right of suffrage upon the negroes _en masse_. In other
countries liberty has been not so much a creation as a growth. In
conservative England, suffrage has been slowly, temperately enlarged,
always preserving restrictions so as not to commit the destinies of the
kingdom to an ignorant mob. Giving the elective franchise to the
suddenly emancipated negroes, placing the government of States in the
hands of such a class, wholly unprepared by education or experience, if
not such a repeating crime, would be a farce for the ages. Every person
of the least intelligence knows that generally the voting of the
negroes is a mere sham. He votes as a machine. He is the tool of the
demagogue, the pawn of a political party. That men with no intelligent
understanding of rights and duties, unable to read, untrained in
political affairs, wholly ignorant of the commonest matters pertaining
to government, superstitious, credulous, victims of impostors, paying
no capitation tax, should decide upon grave questions of organic or
statute law, upon the financial or foreign policy of the country,
should control counties, cities, States, is an offence that will stink
in the nostrils of coming centuries. What has occurred since the
Presidential election is demonstration that both parties at the North
regard unlimited negro suffrage as subversive of the principle of
reliance upon moral worth and clear intelligence. The presence of the
military in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, the hurrying to and
fro of partisans, the secret conclaves and cabalistic telegrams, the
jealous superintendence of the counting of votes, the criminations and
recriminations in reference to fraud and intimidation, are the
legitimate results of the attempt to sustain a party by such extreme
medicine. Our novel experiment of free government cannot