The St. Johns herald., 1891-02-05
The Force Bill.

entitled De Ia DemOcrallce en Amer
 ique," gave it as his opinion that i
 the free institutions of the United
 State should ever be oyerthrOwn
 such overthrow would be caused by the tyranny of a majority display ed in such a manner as to drire a minority to desperation. The able French statesman, whom we have mentioned, considered the craft of an interruptions faction the most dangerous and tyranical of all crafts, and was of opinion that a time would come in our history when the rights of a minority would be trampled on in a ruthless man. ner by majority, regardless of all the dictates of prudence, and bent only on attaining their own selfish ends. He thought that when such a time came, nothing but ruin could be the fate of the republic, and it looks as if such time had come
 A number of interruptions poli- ticians, backed by an minimizing majority in the North, seem deter mined to enter upon a course which will, undoubtedly, drive the white people of the South to desperation and produce a state of anarchy and bloodshed which may result in civil war. When Richard Henry Lee and four other delegates went to Phila- delphia in ITS, to state the terms on which Virginia would agree to surrender a part of Ter sovereignty to the proposed Federal Congress, they were not instructed to give up Virginia's right to control elections within her territorial limits, and they did not do so. Why should the Federal Congress new strive to violate the moral law by robbing Virginia of a right which was in disputably her property when an in dependent community, and which she never surrendered? When Geo. Washington, as President of the United States and deputy from Vir- ginia, signed the constitution, ore of whose sections provided that no law impairing the obligation of a contract should be passed by any State, he little thought that the time would come when certain schemers in Congress would cndeav- or to usurp a function expressly de- nied to the States by the constitu- tion, by striving to pass a law i'm pairing obligation of contract en- tered into between the Federal Con- gress and his own State. Is the contract upon whose terms Virginia entered the Union so much less sa- cred than one made by a huckster, that the constitution will permit the arbitrary anrulment of the former, while it guarantees the strict per formance of the latter? The States have always prescribed the qualif- cations of persons entitled to exer- else the right of suffrage. It has been decided in the courts of Hi nois that State has the right to prescribe the qualifications of vo- 1ers, not only as to State, but also as to Congressional elections, and similar decisions have been render ed in the courts of other States. Senator Hoar's State (Massachu- setts) prescribes the qualifications of voters at congressional elections and this fact shows that she con- siders the control of elections to be a State right. Why should Massa- chusetts, through one of her repre- sentatives, make an effort to inter- fere with Tennessee? Is it a signal proof of her boasted superiority to the rest of the Union in intelligence and culture that she is now endeav- bring to force the white inhabitants of Mississippi, who form but little more than two-tifths of the popula- tion, to submit to the authority of illiterate blacks, whose forefathers, not very long ago, were naked fe-