Year: 1867

Since the result of the fall election, Con- servatism has been discussing the suffrage question. Rather late, indeed, after in- partial suffrage has been granted and acted upon in the very places where impartial suffrage is of the most material impor- tance. Even the N. Y. World admits that at some time, and in some way, the four millions of our Southern negroes must be allowed the electoral privilege. It there fore proposes, that, at the end of five years, the present generation of negroes shall be allowed to vote on a property qualification, and that the next genera ton be granted the privileges unrestricted. The N. Y. Times advocates an educational test.

 A property qualification would be mani festly unjust to the Southern white at the present time, and we cannot see why it would not be equally so to the black. How many of the former have accumulated any property within the past two years, and IS more demanded of the "inferior" than of the "superior" race? Gan the negro be seriously requested to take two promissory notes for his liberties, one payable five years after date, with the hardest of condi- tions attached, the other not due under 30 years, while both rest only on the per sonal security of parties not much given to satisfying inconvenient obligations?. With out impugning the sincerity of the Wor!d, it is easy to see how illusory any such plan for the benefit of the negro would prove.

 The reading and writing qualifications demanded by the Times are much more just and reasonable. The Tunes, however, would hardly claim that the ignorant blacks, who have had but two years in which to learn to read or write, deserve disfranchise- ment more than the ignorant whites who have had the opportunities of lifetime! MT. Conway states that during the late re- gistration, large majority of the whites in many counties of Virginia and North Car olina proved unable to write, and such is undoubtedly the case in large sections of the South. The unavoidable result of ed ucational qualifications would be to throw all political power into the hands of the very class who lately rebelled. It would further make it for the interest of that class to discourage education and to make 6 mere peasantry of their laboring classes, for the sake of perpetuating that power. The political history of every aristocracy, the known hatred of the Southern aristo- crat for political equality, would warrant us in expecting nothing else. Further more, the machinery of another rebellion would be put in perfect running order; the only friends of the Union, South, disfran- chised; the way paved for restoring to power tue very combination of South, ern and Northern State Rights Democracy that made the late rebellion possible.

 While, therefore, nearly every Northern radical would greatly have preferred that the Southern negro should have been edu. cated before he was enfranchised, we have had sufficient proof under the Johnson pol icy, that the disloyal, aristocratic Southern white could not be trusted to carry any plan for the education and gradual enfran- chisement of the blacks into effect. What ever rights the negro is to have, we must give him. The kind of statesmanship that postpones great measures of reform to an- other generation which we, can settle in this, is one that America has learned from most costly experience to avoid.

 That the men into whose hands impartial suffrage throws power in some Southern States will use it altogether wisely we do not expect. We do not imagine, however. that any Southern State will be as badly misgoverned as New York City, and nc Conservative proposes restricted suffrage there. Thorough public education affords the only remedy for the political mistakes public ignorance is iuble to make, North as well as South.