The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1900-06-06
Disfranchisement at Home.

uOblul vi lu6 sulldBO W OOl Wall bhS
lishmen in the Transvaal engaged in
mining the gold of that country and
shipping it to England. Not content
with profits ranging from twenty-five
to six hundred per cent they crave the
absolute possession OF the country and
the control of its affairs that their gains
may be still further magnifed. The
denial by the Transvaal of the suffrage
to foreigners has been only the denial
the United States makes to immigrants.
Taxation without representation there
has been only the taxation levied in
this country, and every other country
under the sun, without representation.
But while these anxious disciples of
fundamental principle in popular gov
eminent have been shedding briny
tears over its alleged violation in South
Africa, and England has been coddled
and justified on the false ground that
she is making war in its defense, the
denial OF the suffrage to millions OF &C.
tual American citizens has been made
effective, and the taxation OF these citi-
zens without representation has become
notorious and fragrant fact. There is
nothing sentimental or technical about
these violations of fundamental princi-
Piles of this government. They are act
ual, notorious, glaring; the intent is
openly and impudently proclaimed and
justified with brutal candor.
One by one the States of the South
have been extending the circuit of this
Acknowledgement till at length it is
completed by the recent action of the
voters Of Virginia. The returns from
the recent election in that State to de-
termine the question of calling con-
stitutional convention for the disfran-
chisement of the negroes indicate a
majority of about $4,000 in favor of the
proposition. According to the last
census, in the three States of South
Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana,
the colored population was larger than
the white. In each OF these States
practical Acknowledgement Of the COL
ored voters, wholesale and sweeping,
has been accomplished by constitution
al amendments. Virginia had 635, 900
colored inhabitants, North Carolina
$4,000, and Alabama $4,000. In
these three States the colored popula-
ton, though not in the majority, is
large enough to be formidable polit.
ically. Virginia has yielded to the
demand for a constitutional amend
ment to disfranchse these colored citi-
zens, North Carolina will vote on the
proposition in August and similar
proposition will soon come before the
people of Alabama with the positive
assurance that it will be adopted.
Virginia is the most important State
which has yet acted on the question.
1t is more populous than any other
State in which the question of negro
Acknowledgement has been raised. 1t
is more northerly than any Of the other
States in which the question has been
considered. Its material relations with
the North, consequent upon the great
development Of it's manufacturing and
transportation interests, are more init
mate, and the colored inhabitants of
Virginia are, generally speaking, more
intelligent, better educated, better quail
flied for the duties of citizenship, and
less shiftless than those Of other south
ern States in which it has been adopted,
and, moreover, the white Republicans
of Virginia are, many of them, men of
influence and of substance, closely iden-
tilted with the States recent develop
ment and an important element in its
political affairs.
1t does not appear that the progress
of the wholesale work of disfranchise-
ing class of people made citizens by
special amendment of the Constitution
OF the United States, whose fidelity
to the Union cause was mistaken,
who saved thousands of Federal SOL
diers from death, piloted to freedom
Federal prisoners escaping from Con-
federate prison hells, fought with I'M
surpassed courage in the battles of the
Civil War, whose labor is the chief fac
tor in the industrial prosperity of the
South, whose members are making
rapid progress in all the qualifications
of good and intelligent citizenship--it
does not appear that people, on whose
troubled vision rises like the full round
moon on an autumn evening the spec
tacle of civil rights withheld from the
squatter English sovereigns of the
Transvaal, have discovered anything
particularly heinous or worthy of their
condemnation in the violation at home
of actual and guaranteed civil rights.
Nevertheless, it is matter OF very
lar0a.aizad nOlitical innnrtapca