The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-26

vention, when you erect here one plan that covers 95< per cent of one race, and have adopted a provision covering the whole of the other race, save 5 per cent. ask you if you have not dis criminated? Am I wrong in this? Your distinguished Senator. General Pettus. one of the best lawyers in the South. after having investigated it for the purpose of determining whether or not it was in violation of the Consti- tuition. declared that 1t was. He in- vestigated 1t for the Louisiana Sena- tors at their request The provision in the Louisiana suffrage plan is not different in effect from ours, and he gave 1t as his written opinion, that 1t violated the 18th Amendment. He is now opposed to this clause, and that other distinguished Senator from this State is also opposed to 1t. I will send this letter to the Clerks desk, ask him to read 1t and ask you if you will not listen to me. to listen to him.
 Warm Springs, Va, July 6, 1901. Dear Captian White:
 The American revolution was not So much redress of grievances, as 1t was a struggle to abolish heredity in Government. That was the real line of division between Democratic and regal government and between free religion and the church established by law. Heredity disappeared, with its associ- ated rights of perpetuity in the own ership of lands, and many minor hered- itaments of feudalism. such as titles and tenures and servitudes, when our new democratic scheme of government was instituted.
 Political heredity, and all its appur- tenances. such as prerogative and titu- lar nobility and primogeniture, and all its protecting laws, such as corruption of blood, premunire and excommunica- ton, periohed and were placed under the heel of prohibition by our Constitu- ton. Whoever would restore any of these, to that extent. discredits the cause of the Revolution.
 Without suffrage. the new system had no possible means Of expressing the sovereign will of the people in laws, and their enforcement by executive and judicial authority.
 These necessary agents of the gov ernment by and for the people can only be chosen by voters; and voters could only be created by law. not by inheritance. These voters arc chosen representatives to perform the single function of eleeting the lawful officers of government.
 The trust confided to them Is per- sonai. and can neither be sold. or del- egated. or transmitted by inheritance. or by will to any other person. It is this quality of non-transmissibility that distinguishes 1t from the regal form Of inheritance power, and marks the line of the impossible gulf between regal government and democratic gov- ernmept. The voters, as a class, or body, have certain physical conditions, such as age and sex, that are neces- sary qualifications and certain moral and poytica! qualifications that are personal and independent of heritable blood.
 To make blood the medium of trans hitting the electoral power from fath- CT to son, Is to uproos from its foun- daticns, the whole system of demo- cratic government. and to reinstate the system azi the form of regal govern- ment.
 The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amend- meuts have no more to do with this subject than any other part of the or ganic law.
 The transmission of the electoral power by the blood of inheritance from father to son, would destroy all dis tiuction between regal government and democracy. and would throw the door wide open for a return to the system that the American revolution abolished. The steps would be few. and would be rapidly taken. to the complete restora- tion of monarchy. so soon as We give to any class of voters the power to qualify their sons as voters by inheri- tancc. In this case. It is the first step that tells. with fatal and irrevocabls effect. The argument is irresistible, that offices should follow the blood. If the power that creates them is the blood of inheritance; and this Is all that is meant in the British system of titled nobility which alone legis- lates in the House of Lords, and of re- gal blood anod prerogative which up- holds the throne, and the power of ap- pointment to office, which is an appen- age of the throne, and the pardoning power over which the peocIe have ID control.
 We are making too near an-approach to this system of the perpetual trans mission of power. by inheritance. suc- cession and appointment in the wide latitude of power. and the wider eX- emption from responsibility. that our courts are giving to corporations. The process is not identical. and is not be- yond control in the case of corporate powers and the almost immortality of their alleged rights of succession. But their triumphant and alarming license reaching above the powers of govern ment, serve as an indication of the wild demand for office. patronage and power that will follow when the States have established a right nf heredity as to the electoral franchise.
 When such a titled class of voters is created by the organic law. it will soon occur to them that no other class should be allowed to vote. and they will usurp all power It is far from being a comfort to me that some ne groes are included. and many white men arc left out. by the ordinance re- ported by the majority of the Commit tee on Suffrage in this ordinance of inheritable blood. With great respect,
 (Signed) John T, Morgan.
 To Hon. Frank g. White. Delegate to the Constitutional Convention of Ala abama.
 Again. on July IT, he says: Your stand against suffrage by inheritance is so obviously right. that the state ment of it is conclusive" Now Mir. President, my friend. the distinguished gentleman from Madison. says this clause is but another means of desig- hating a class who have T capacity to exercise the elective franchise. In other words. that you could select the men by name, that this is but the means of designating class which all ready possess the qualification. be- lieve I state it correctly. The error in this sta tempnt is that he assumes that