l community to handle its own affairs,
while only the most general and fundamental interests are intrusted to
the central authority. When the Southern States were left to themselves,
they did some unwise and unjust things,--and there had been something of
unwisdom and injustice in the time of Federal supervision--but on the
whole it was the re-establishment of the normal order. The policy which
naturally followed on the part of the general government was the
avoidance of special legislation, especially of the restrictive kind.

But within its own sphere, the national government should follow those
principles which are in the best sense American. Thus the executive, in
its appointments to office, ought to recognize an equality of race, like
that which the Constitution affirm as to civil rights and the suffrage.
It is of vital moment that the American nation,--whatever local
communities may do,--should not bar competent men from office because of
race. Here as elsewhere,--the tools to him who can use them, the career
open to the fit talent. This should hold good wherever the national
executive acts, South as well as North. The principle should
be applied with reasonable regard to the sentiments of the local
community,--reasonable but not servile regard. In a city by character
and tradition a stronghold of the white race, it seems unwise to give a
principal office to a black man. But in a community where the black
element is strong in numbers and in character, and where the dark race
offers fit incumbents for office, there should be a fair number of such
appointments. If it is said "This is offensive to the Southern people,"
the answer is, Who are the Southern people? Not the white people only,
but the black people also.

As to legislation, a measure was recently proposed and somewhat
discussed, which has perhaps passed like other bubbles, but the proposal
of which caused natural agitation and apprehension at the South. This
was a scheme for applying the Fourteenth Amendment to the reduction of
Congressional representation in the South in proportion to the negroes
excluded from suffrage by the new State Constitutions. Some such
reduction may be permissible under the amendments,--for the later
Fifteenth Amendment only forbids the States to limit suffrage by "color,
race, or previous condition of servitude." Limitation by a property or
educational test is not forbidden; but under the Fourteenth Amendment it
might be made th