The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-20

quent; the story OF journey from the City /
of Destruction, fenced with slavery, to the |
celestial land of liberty, etc; that ''dozens |
and dozens" of them ''could write such a |
page of common sense on the politics of |
South Carolina as has not appeared in the |
Nation for many a day. 1t alleges further, |
that no matter how illiterate they may have |
been, 'their legislation was invariably on the
side of human freedom" and AYERS ''that
there is nothing like a begging of the ques-
ton in all this the writer evidently feeling
a little uncomfortable about the look of the
argument. 1t is quite evident that we shall
not get from this quarter any information as
to the mental condition of the Legislature.
People, we are glad to say, are beginning
to understand this sort of talk. The legisla-
ton of all popular bodies everywhere is ''now
on the side of human freedom" for the
simple reason that the big battalons are on
the side OF human freedom Open hostility
to individual rights we shall probably never
again see expressed in laws The frank and
formal assertion of class interests, if not at an
end, is very nearly at end. The reign of
brute force against which the world has been
SO long contending, is nearly over; the enc
mics with which the next age will have to
cope are fraud and chicane, working under
the forms of popular government. When
William Nj. Tweed and Peter B. weeny were
trying to get control of the government of
this city, which they now hold more securely
than Louis Napoleon holds the government
of Paris, they did not begin to
abuse the Irish and Germans, or
advocate restrictive legislation directed
against 'tbe poor man. They proclaimed
themselves his champions and defenders:
stoutly opposed all attempts to keep him out
of the public house or to exact qualifications
of him for the exercise of the elective fran
chise; and they may truly say that all legisla-
ton in which they have had hand is ION
the side of human freedom" But their rule
is, nevertheless, as abomiuable yoke as the
poor man has ever lived under. In no capitalin
the world is so much of his wages taken by
thieves and so much disregard of his highest
interests displayed in the work of govern
ment. In other words, he is oppressed
through his ignorance and his vote combined.
One of the awful crimes of the old slave
holders was their deliberate, Legislative denial
of knowledge to their laboring population.
That alone was sufficient to cause the Furies
| to be let loose on them; but if they had done
it through sheer hate of the colored people,
which we do not believe, they could not
have wished better sequence to their reign
than the election, under the regime of free
| dom, of such Legislature as has been sitting
in Charleston during the past winter Better
means of bringing freedom into contempt
and of making the restoration of pure, honest
! government difficult and distant, could not
d
have been struck at the colored race The
man who hogged or imprisoned a negro for
learning to read committed a great crime,
but it was, we say deliberately, a far less
crime than is committed by the man who
persuades whole country of negroes that
Whittemore is proper man to represent
them in Congress. The one foully oppressed
the body, but the other corrupts the con-
science and perverts the judgmept-in other
words, speads disease for which in one
generation there is hardly any cure possible.
Those who advocated, as we did, the extern
sion of the suffrage to the blacks as an essen
tial feature of reconstruction, have naturally
more to answer for in this matter than any
body else, and it would be wrong, even if it
were not futile, to try to escape the respon-
sibility. We believe still, in spite of all that
has happened, that it was the best, if not the
only, course open to Congress. Wewish sim
cerely it had been coupled with an educational
test, imposed on all colors equally. We have
no doubt the effect would have been admira-
BILE, and we should, for the purpose of giving
such test time to work, have been willing to
see military government maintained till this
moment in every one of the States. We have
heard, during the past winter, one ofthe ablest
of the lady teachers who went down from the
North to labor among the negroes, after the
war, tell of the way in which the schools in
her district Cn Virginia) were crowded with
adults during the reconstruction debates in
Congress, while it was still believed that the
franchise would not be bestowed without
exacting educational qualifications for it's
exercise, and of the way in which they were
deserted as soon as it became certain that no
qualification whatever would be required
Such stories, of course, set one inevitably to
what is sometimes very Improbable occu-
patton, thinking of ''what might have been. "
But in this instance they contain lesson
which is still of use. 1t is bad enough,
of course, that the blacks should
be ignorant voters, but we verify
believe that, ignorant as they
are, their votes would serve the legitimate
purpose of protecting them from oppression
and class legislation, and helping their politi-
cal and social training if the passage of a
general amnesty secured the admission of the
Southern whites to their natural share in the
government of their States 1t is prolonged
exclusion from politics of the intelligence and
culture of the South, and not the ignorance
of the blacks which is working the present
mischief, and making so many of the States
the prey of INSCRIPTIONS Northern adven-
turers-perhaps the worst enemies the negro
has ever had.
These gentry, and their Northern allies,
are now try ing hard to retain their hold on
power, and continue their nefarious calling,
by representing everybody who calls atten-
tion to their performance as ''an enemy of
the colored man and the Unionist"-in other
words are trying to live off Northern patri-
otism and humanity. But it is high time the
honest, Christian people of the North used
their influence to bring this little comedy to
an end. It's continuance is disgrace to the
country and will ruin the party if it lasts