The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-12-14

religious qualifications, and various loyal quail
icatiOns--but it has never before been required
that man should take an oath to his belief in
the political capacity of others before he should
be enfranchised himself. Garry out this test
and we shall next hear of conventions that
require subscription to the Chicago platform,
or the Philadelphia platform, or the Baltimore
platform, or some other shibboleth of party
creed. Parties, in fact, will soon come to dis
franchise each other, as the Mexican and
Spanish parties often do, till political contests
are no longer struggle Of votes, but strug-
gle of force.
We ourselves believe most heartily in the
natural equality of all men. We believe that
all men are entitled to civil rights and to the
protection of the Government in the exercise
of them. We believe that political rights
ought to be diffused as extensively as possible
throughout the community, and that no par
tial or class qualifications ought to be adopted;
but we know a great many very good men
who do not agree with us in these particulars;
and shall we, on that account, deprive them Of
the suffrageH We know very good men who
think, as the editors of the Express lately,
with a large party behind them, that foreign
ers ought not to be suffered to vote; shall
we disfranchise them for that opinion
There are hosts in California who maintain
that it would not be at all wise to make voters
of those Asiatics and heathen the Chinese;
| shall we exclude them from the registry |?
| There are sixteen thousand Republicans in
| Kansas, and two hundred Democrats in Ohio,
| who hold that negroes are yet unworthy OF
participating in the Government; must they
be ostracized2 In a word, is mans mere
belief or sentiment in regard to any question
of political policy to be made the test of his
capacity for the suffrage or of his eligibility to
| Office Yet that is precisely the test which
the Alabama Convention requires of all who
are to be registered as electors, and of all who
are to be chosen to any political position.
There are in Alabama thousands of men
who are not yet prepared "to accept the politi-
cal and civil equality of all men," in the
shape it has taken in that State they do not
honestly regard the negro so lately slave as
fit to exerciee the franchise, to sit on juries,
and to become Legislators and governors; they
allege that he has had no experience of self
| government that he cannot read and write,
that he is ignorant of the commonest truths,
and that he is still the degraded and brutal
lied victim Of slavery; and that time, pro-
| baton, the use and wont of freedom, the
custom of obedience to law, rather than to a
masters will, is necessary to his proper edu-
cation into citizenship, is necessary to render
him responsible and self-determining being
and not the tool of demagogues and intriguers;
| but for such opinions are these men to have
no vote in AlabamaY
They may be wrong opinions; they may be
vulgar prejudices; they may arise even from
malignant hostility to the negro; but are men
| to be disfranchised because they are not SO
enlightened or liberal as to approve of the
negro's enfranchisement Apply the same test
in many other States, not so recently emanoi-
pated from the old tyranny OF caste as Ala
| bama, and a majority OF their people would
scarcely be found in the intellectual and moral
condition which this test makes the sine qua
non of legislation. 1t was no doubt natural
that the loyalists and negroes of Alabama
should dread their old foes of the wartime,
and seek to tie their hands by constitutional
restraints, but the mode is none the less
| bigoted and impolitic, and in a few years
would make the authors of it themselves
ashamed.
If the people of the State do not reject this
| Constitution, Congress will be compelled to
! pass upon it, and we do not doubt that it will
| at once correct the narroWness OF its prosorip-
tions. The classes disfranchised under its
own acts are already too large. AS the con-
trolling classes of Southern society-the men
of character and leadership-they need to be
reconcled, not repulsed. "If we cannot gain
| their support" said the late Governor
Andrew-"the support of the strongest and
ablest minds, the natural leaders Of opinion
at the South, to the just measures needful
for the work of safe reorganization, reorga-
nizaton will be delusive and full of dan
do, then, is to strike out all these political
prescriptions, and insert in their place the
simple test of an ability to read the Constitu-
ton of the United States, and to subscribe
ones name to the registry. That, we believe,
would be an end to the whole reconstruction
muddle. First. Because the test is that which
is adopted in the most advanced and best
governed State of the misunderstanding
Second. Because the test would be nearly inn
partial, as between the blacks and whites, il
the present condition Of Southern culture
Third. Because it would hold forth strong
inducement to both blacks and whites to
acquire the rudiments Of learning and to sup
port the schools. Fourth. IL would meet
the approval, or at least disarm the hostl-
lity, of the principal conservatives OF the
South, as we infer from their journals ana re-
cent speeches and addresses. Fifth: IL would
fall in with the views of the President, as he
exnressed them in Tennessee, and as they art
now represented by Senator Doolittle; and
sixth, ii would not encounter bitter hostility
rom the Democrats whose ablest and mos
4 i;aa,,o.,,;aI9 oTgau the World not lon0 sinAe