The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-25

provide that thcse not forming part or that group shall have tneif ntness and qualifications passed upon py an oficial or by a board established TOT that purpose. Now. gentlemen, that IS the plan that has been adopted py this committee. They have segregated rom the mass of the voting popuiation or Alabama that body of citizens incluo- ed in the description of soldiers and the descendants of soldiers, and have opened the dcor to the right of suffrage 10 all others who can bring themselves within the definition in the third clause Of the Article. namely, all others who are of good character and Who unoer- stand the duties and obligations or cltl- zenship. Now, objection is made to this upon the ground of its unconstitution- ality, upon the ground that 1t Is not warranted by good policy; upon the ground that it Is arbitrary and capri cious. Why. gentlemen, we are here to undertake to meet those grounds. Now' who are the soldiers and their descend ants? They have the right to vote now. They form a distinct and we'll defined part of our present voting popu- lation. For more than generation they have participated in the pupnc affairs of this country and as Dooy have participated freely and without injury to the public interests. ihey constitute a well-defined and prominent part of our citizenship. Objection IS made by the distinguished gentleman from Montgomery that there Will De found in this class that we have named in this way. some who are unfit to be voters because of deficiency in charac- ter or deficiency in intelligence. The same thing could be said about any other general qualifications that might be prescribed Make reading and writ ing the general test. There Will De no difficulty in the world in finding many men who can read, and many men who can write who are totally devoid or the qualities of good citizens. Make the possession of certain amount or property the test. There will be no diff ficulty in finding men with that amount of property who are vicious and debased and wholly unfit to exer- else the privilege of citizenship. l submit, gentlemen, that. take the body of our citizenship that you segregate by describing soldiers and their de- scendants, and you take body Of men whose capacity for f-government has been more fully demonstrated than a like body of men with education or with property that you might select in any other part of the world. Tnat is a body of men who have assimllated the principles of our government. The proportion of the unfit among them Is hardly an appreciable quantity. Let me ask you this question:: If the right to vote in Alabama had heretofore been confined to the soldiers and their de- scendants. would we have this suffrage problem now? (Applause). If this State could suffer this misfortune of having taken out of its body polite the soldiers and their descendants and have them transplanted to any part or the world, civilized or uncivilized, that group of citizens would transplant Ala bama's self-governing system upon whatever soil they occupied. Carry them to the Philippine Islands or to South America and colonize them there. and you would carry the right of trial by jury; you would carry an alert public opinion; you would carry the principle of no taxation without rep resentation; you would carry the rule of the majority. Our popular system of government would go wherever those men went. Is there political philoso- pher or a practical statesman in the wide world who would look upon that body of men and propose to take away from them the powers of self-govern- ment unless he was an open enemy of DODuldT government AS lHC uioIlh- guished gentleman from Montgomery said, we are here to deal with condi- tions. The majority say, leave the right to vote to the soldiers and their descendants, because there is no req son for taking it away from them. Is that not practicable statesmanship? Are we to deal with something from which we have suffered no evil? Are we to erect some imaginary arbitrary standard here that will operate to take from that portion of the people of the State of Alabama who have demon strated their fitness the right to exer- else the privileges of government in order to make harmonious some po- litical scheme? Why, gentlemen. we are dealing with a practical problem. We come here to take the right to vote from those who abuse the privilege and as to those who have exercised 1t right ly to leave 1t just where 1t stands. Is anything more done? Is that not the general result of the action of the Suf- frage Committed? Can any man say that that body of citizens have not more fully demonstrated by their his tory that they are qualified to retain the privilege of suffrage than any other body of men that may be found in any part of the world? That body of citi zens, though scattered over the face of American society and spread in every direction, yet is as distinct as Is the Gulf stream in the waters of the At Iantic. The question is, shall we take the right away from them? They al- ready have the right to vote. We are not conferring it upon them. We are here to strike out the evil in our cleo toral system and to let what Is good in it remain as it is. This is a move ment of reform, gentlemen, but reform becomes mere folly when It strikes out blindly and tears down what is good as well as destroys what is bad. We have confined the exercise of the power that Is vested in us to that which Is bad in the system we are dealing with, and when you analyZe the proposition that we have submitted to this Con vention, you cannot find that our ac- tion has gone beyond that. There would not have been any Convention Eere If this body of men in whom we propose to leave the right of suffrage. had alone up to this time had that right There would not be in any part of this country a movement to aban- don the time -honore ed custom of univer- sal suffrage unless our voting popula- tion had been diluted or polluted by the infusion into 1t of elements that ought to have been excluded. We here in the South have this problem to deal with, because the self governing ele- ment of the population in this part of country has been vitiated by the injec
 tion into 1t of large mass of ignorant negroes. In other parts of the coun- try, the proposition to limit universal