esist him, and not more for our own sake than for his. The
brutalizing influence of slavery upon the master class is the curse of
the Southern States to-day, and has much more to do with the
difficulties of solving the race problems than does the ignorance of the
blacks. The Government is not guiltless in this matter of interpretation
of the scriptural injunction. In the matter of State rights, Southern
election laws, and mob violence, our Government has turned the other
cheek also. What has been the result? Why the tyrants continue to become
more and more brutal, until they are not only running black men out, but
they have recently, at the muzzle of the shot gun, forced their own kith
and kin, men to the manor born, to leave the States. I have no hesitancy
in proclaiming that this brutality is a legacy left us by slavery,
against which we have to contend, making itself felt in the organized
mob and in disregard of constituted authority.

In these days of imperialism and territorial expansion, when there is,
likewise, much discussion on the subject of inferior races, it is
fitting that we should place ourselves aright upon the question of
suffrage and rights of franchise. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., says:
"Whosoever laments the scope of suffrage, and talks of disfranchising
men on account of ignorance or poverty, has as little comprehension of
the meaning of self-government as a blind man has of the colors of the
rainbow. I declare my belief that we are suffering, not from a too
extended ballot, but from one too limited and unrepresentative. We
enunciate a principle of government, and then deny it in practise. If
experience has established anything, it is that the interest of one
class is never safe in the hands of another. There is no class so poor
or ignorant in a republic that it does not know its own suffering and
needs better than the wealthy or educated classes. By the rule of
justice, it has the same right precisely to give it legal expression.
That expression is bound to come, and it is wiser to have it come
through the ballot-box than through mobs and violence, born of a feeling
of despair and misery." Those States in the South which are passing laws
restricting suffrage, to promote the selfish ends of a class, are sowing
to the wind and will surely reap the whirlwind. In a republican
government, supposed to be ruled by the popular vote, a people's liberty
has practically been taken when the right to vote is de