The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-11-02
RennhIIcnn ALma.


Congress has arranged it, will end. By hook
or by crook the Southern States will come into
the Union under it, and for the most part they
will be brought in by Radical hands. The
new constitutions will, of course, meet Con-
gressional requirements, and then all will be
done for the Southern negro that the Republi-
can party at the North has proposed to do by
direct legislation. We put aside the scheme of
establishing each colored head of a family on a
fOrty-acre farm as one which the party, as a
party, has never seriously entertained, though
some of its leaders may have talked of it.
Whatever is to be done, if anything is to be
DONE towards the better distribution of landed
property at the South, will have to be done by
State legislation. We are getting further aud
further away every day from the possibility of
Congress undertaking any such job There
will still remain the task of abOlishing the
Odious discrimination against negroes at the
North by which the legislation of several
States is still disgraced.
We fear the opportunity of accomplishing
this speedily has, as we pointed out last week
passed away for the present, but we are salts
fed, nevertheless, that the abuse will not be
of very long duration. 1t cannot last under
the battery of a free press and free platform
The arguments by which the Ohio RepubH
cans defend their opposition to it at the late
election show that it cannot last very long
for they show that it rests simply on ignorance
or prejudice. If it appeared that there was
any principle Of government to which the body
of the people are deeply attached violated by
the admission of the negroes to the polls, we
should look forward to a long and doubtful
struggle. But when there is nothing better to
be said against it than that people dislike or
despise "niggers," or that ''this is a white
mans government " we know that its triumph
is not very far distant.
But supposing, then, 'equal suffrage" esta-
bhshed all over the countryside millennium
would still be to come. There are abundant
indications on all sides of us that many good
people are not of this opinion. The fight
against caste and privilege and inequality be-
fore the law has been so bitter, the prize on
which the Republican party is at last setting
Its hands seems so splendid and has seemed so
remote, that people have naturally enough
worked themselves up into the belief that
once it is attained, most of the ills by which
the body polite is affected will soon disappear
The ballot during the last two years has been
constantly spoken of as if it were a kind of
panacea, as if we had only to give it to persons
of the male and female sex, not lunatics or
criminals, in order to see the Golden Age
return, to see the thorny path of pro-
gress, along which the race has thus
far struggled with bleeding feet, sud
denly converted into path of flowers, in which
"toil of heart and knees and hands, will be
no longer necessary. OF course we do not
mean to affirm that if any individual Re-
publican were asked privately whether he
thought impartial suffrage would bring back
the Golden Age, he would not laugh the idea to
scOrn. But we do not hesitate to affirm that
there has been widely diffused through the
ranks OF the party vague notion that the
ballot once secured for all, we should find our
selves on 'the shining table-lands," where
questions OF government would give us no
more trouble, where every man would know
his duty and do it, and the knaves and op-
pressors would fade into nothingness. We go
further, and affirm that this notion, vague
though it has been, has done much towards
creating and fostering the recklessness and
Carelessness in the management of the
party, the Indifference of good men to the cor
ruptiOn and jobbery and humbug which have
brought on it its recent reverses, and which
render its success in this State still doubtful.
If the conviction that the ballot is, after all,
but means to an end; that in the hands of
ignorant men it is but means of defense and
Of education; that, like any other power, it
may be uesd for good as well as for evil; aud
that the cause of all bad government in all
ages and all nations has been the ignorance of
the mass OF the people, had been general we
should not have witnessed the squandering of
resources, the waste of enthusiasm, of devo-
ton, and of numbers during the past two
years which have brought the party into its
present difficulties.
1t is, however, because we do not believe the
mission Of the Republican party to be simply
the work OF reconstruction, or the establish
ment OF universal suffrage because we do
believe that even if the organization should
under its present name disappear when these
ends have been accomplished, it will reappear
with but very little change in its elements
under another; that it is now, and must re-
main by whatever name it may be known the
party of progress-the party which will seek
to govern men through their reason rather
than through their prejudices, their appetites.
or their selfshness the party of order, of
education, of peace, and of national honesty
the party through which good and patriotic
men will have to bring their convictions 10
bear on public atfairs-that we rejoice in its
successes and should mourn its recent
reverses more if we did not feel that they will
prove the means of purifying it and indreas-
ing its efficiency.
But it must get rid of the notion at once
and for ever that universal suffrage is a cure
All, and that when il has secured this its work
Is over Its work will never be over while
theFe are such things as knaVery or cOrrup.
ZION IN politics; while there is a single bit of
Iegisialioh needed TO advance the common
wear, single law on the statuta-boox which
keeps people from being as hapnv or 40 nros-
porous as they might be if IL wsra ,,o4 tbana
1t is not the party of "eaual suAra1, - 40 c
any other political pill or tonic: IL is }bo 49,
of good government, of virtue Irron, Pay
and understanding. -0Nse,