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REPUBLICAN government is founded on the consent of the gov erned. Acquiescence in existing rule, a passive submission to the powers that be, obtains in monarchical governments; but the free consent of the people gov. erned, the running together of their wills in making the laws, organic and statute, and in choosing officers to administer them, characterizes a republican government. A truly republican government is one in which all the people have an equal voice in the choice of legislators to frame laws, and of judicial and executive officers to enforce them. own Government approximates this standard more nearly than any other, and is becoming more perfectly republicanized by the more general and equal distribution of power among the people. The general diffusion of knowledge, by schools, the press, and the marvelous facilities for intercourse and the transmission of news, by steam and lightning, have made it impossible for individuals to attain such colossal reputations and wield such autocratic power, as in the earlier days of the republic. As intelligence increases and the masses are lifted up to a higher mental and moral stature, the proportions of our great men seem less huge and overshadowing. Not that they are not equal to those of former times; but they seem relatively smaller, because the disproportion between the masses and their leaders is yearly lessening. And this assimilation is due, not to the diminished stature of our great men, but to the growth of the common people. And it is well for the cause of republican government that it is so.

Webster, Clay and Calhoun waned in reputation and influence, in the zenith of their intellectual power, because the people, waked to self-consciousness, had grown in knowledge and self-respect. They were the oracles of their times, but they made no lasting impression upon the age, and left no enduring monuments behind them. They had great ambitions, but no high moral purpose. Webster, "the God-like," turned his back on freedom in the Senate Chamber, on the ides of March, and, crowning an honorable public life with infamy, for the promise of the Chief Magistracy, fell, to rise no more. Clay, the silver-tongued, chased the Presi dency for a life time, and failed. Calhoun, balked of presidential honors, strove, for a quarter of a century, to constitutionalize slavery and build up a slave empire; but his labors brought down the whole slave fabric in ruins upon his own scarcely turfed grave, and led to national emancipation by organic law. Neither Jefferson nor Jackson, incarnations of the one-man power in our Government, could be repeated in the present age. Frank Blair's assumed fear, that General Grant will make himself dictator and grasp at imperial power, is the wildest fantasy. Were he to attempt such a libertieide, the Republicans would be as prompt as their opponents to put down both the usurp ation and the usurper. General Grant is strong, simply because he has done the country essential service, and, by his simplicity, modesty, integrity and directness of purpose and action, meets the public wish. The moment he ceases to represent the popular will, and sets

up his own authority above the constitution and laws, he will become as weak as water, and fail as miserably as his immediate predecessor.

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The people have been in advance of their rulers in every movement bring the Government into more perfect harmony with Republican principles. This was strikingly manifest during our late war for national integrity. They bore the Government upon their shoulders, pressing it forward to more decisive and vigorous action, from the storming of Fort Sumter to Lee's surrender. Slavery, which had been an anomalous and disturbing force in the Government from its organization, had mustered its armed champions to divide the Union and establish a new government, whose corner-stone was the rightfulness of human bondage. The Federal Government undertook to put down a rebellion for the supremacy of slavery, by upholding slavery itself, and the Secretary of State publicly proclaimed this purpose, by assuring the crowned heads of Europe, that, whatever might be the issue of the war, it would not change the status of a single human being. And the people waited on their rulers, by petition, remonstrance and suffering for almost three long, weary years, till, as in the plagues of Egypt, under the judgments of God for oppression, there was scarcely a household in which there was not one dead, before the President issued the proclamation of freedom which arrayed four millions of slaves, the public sentiment of the civilized world and the moral forces of the universe on the side of the Federal Government, made the triumph of the Union cause absolutely certain, and the success of the Southern Confederacy morally impossible. For slavery was the vitalizing element of the rebellion, and, when it perished, the days of the rebellion were numbered.

After emancipation by constitutional amendment, the political status of the

freedmen became a practical question for the consideration of the Government. Should they be admitted to all the rights and privileges of citizenship, political as well as civil, or should they constitute a separate and special class, without political rights, nominally free, but politically serfs, an inferior and dependent race, at the mercy of the superior and governing class? The chief obstacle to their enfranchisement was the prejudice of race, born of slavery. And this was strong, North and South, just in proportion to the pro-slavery spirit of the people. The whole genius and spirit of the constitution demanded universal suffrage, and the logic of necessity was stronger than the spirit of caste. And so, after three more years of delay, and the utter failure of every other plan of reconstruction, Congress authorized the rehabilitation of the seceded States, on the basis of suffrage for all the male citizens of those States who had not forfeited their rights by the crimes of perjury and treason. And to-day, suffrage is guaranteed, by constitutional provisions, to all male citizens over twenty-one years of age, untainted with crime, in all the reconstructed States. In the New England States, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnnesota, no discriminations are made at the polls on account of color or race. New York, colored men worth $250 are entitled to vote. In all the remaining States, which were members of the Union previous to the war, colored men are denied the right of suffrage. In some of these States the initiatory measures are about being taken to enfranchise colored men by constitutional amendments, and all invidious distinctions at the ballot box, on account of color, will be abolished as soon as it can be accomplished by constitutional forms. This would, doubtless, be effected by State action in all the States, except Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky, within a decade.

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But public opinion and the public interests cannot brook this delay. And now, that all decent excuses for denying political rights to the colored race have been taken away by the abolition of slavery, they demand that the anomaly of political serfdom, in a republican government, shall be abolished in the speediest constitutional manner. And in obedience to public sentiment, Gov. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, has proposed, in the House of Representatives, an amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting any State from denying or abridging the right of any citizen to vote, except for crime, and giving Congress authority to enforce this provision. He has also introduced a bill for a law, giving all citizens, irrespective of color, the right to vote for President and Vice President, Members of Congress, and of the State Legislature. The amendment should positively affirm the right of every citizen to the ballot, as well as prohibit the States from denying this right. If adopted and sent to the State Legislatures speedily, impartial manhood suffrage would become the law of the land, in the first year of Grant's administration.

I have offered no proof, except the character of our Government, of the right of the colored man to suffrage. There needs none. He is a man, and that is all there is to be said about it. When slavery perished, all the frame work of slave legislation and the judicial decisions built upon it, and all the habilities and disabilities of slavery were swept out of existence, by the dissolving breath of freedom, and the emancipated slave stood up a man-a free man- with a just claim to all the rights of a freeman. To deny this is to deny that ours is a republican government, whose charter of power is the consent of the governed, whose vital principle is the equality of all men before the law, and whose whole genius and spirit are opposed to all aristocra

čies and class distinctions. The United States Constitution knows nothing of caste, or color, or race. Purified from all taint of slavery, it spreads its protecting ægis equally over black and white, high and low, rich and poor. The weakest and humblest may invoke its guardian care and avenging rod, and the mightiest must yield to its behests.

The colored man has all the attributes of a man hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, loves, hates, passions, temptations, capacity for pleasure and pain, inward conflicts, aspirations for a better life, boundless possibilities, everything which belongs to humanity-and by virtue of his manhood, of his responsibility to law and of his obligation to sustain the Government by his treasure and blood, he has the same moral right to a voice in the administration of the Government as the whitest citizen, or the dignitaries who make and execute the laws at our state and national capitals.

There is no protection for a man like the ballot. It invests him with sovereignity, and makes him the peer, in governing power, with his fellow men, of whatever race, or parentage, or condition in life. It not only inspires him with self-respect, but it compels lawmakers, judges and presidents to respect him, for they know that he holds their political destiny in his hands. His vote makes and unmakes them. No class of men, with the ballot in their hands, need fear the enactment of invidious laws, for they have power to change laws and law-makers at their will. no class, deprived of the ballot, ever enjoyed the protection of just and equal laws. To disfranchise a man is to degrade him, to diminish his self-respect, and place him at the mercy of unprincipled and rapacious legislators. And every man needs the ballot for his own protection. His rights are not safe without it. Nor is the government safe with a large class of disfranchised citizens under its rule. And the discords

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and anarchy prevailing at the South, to-day, owing to the unwillingness of the hitherto dominant class to accord to the colored race equal political rights, is a striking illustration of this truth.

The ballot box is the safety valve and regulator of republican government. It is the natural outlet of all discontent with bad laws, the forum where all public questions are discussed and settled, the many-voiced tribunal where final judg ment is pronounced upon public measures and public men. It is an impartial tribunal, where every elector has an equal voice, and from its decision there is no appeal. There is no excuse for riots, mobs, seditions, insurrections and rebellions, where all men have the ballot. Whatever reforms or changes are needed, however radical and sweeping, can be effected peaceably and bloodlessly at the polls. The ballot substitutes the law of reason for the law of force. It is stronger than armies and wiser than senates, for it embodies the strength and wisdom of a whole people. It is safer than the laws of Congress, or the decrees of courts, for it revises them by the light of experience in the spirit of patriotism. Congressmen may be venal and judges accept gifts, but a whole nation cannot be bribed to its own undoing, till it is corrupted beyond reformation or redemption. The ballot is revolution constitutionalized, and, like the changes in nature, working in harmony with established laws, is noiseless, peaceful and salutary.

There have been various propositions to restrict suffrage to men possessing a certain amount of property, or ability to read and write.

To disfranchise the poor is either to treat poverty as a crime, or to punish men for their misfortunes, and to withhold the protection of the ballot from the class that most need it. For the rich can protect themselves. It is to make one's political rights depend on the vicissitudes of fortune. It is to di

vide the people into rich and poor, the governed and the governing classes, and to create an aristocracy in fact, if not in name. It is to ordain the government of the whole by a part, and make a part equal to the whole. No such policy as this can prevail without changing the character of our Government. To apply the property test to colored citizens, and not to whites, would be a still further departure from republican principles, by making color, and not manhood, a qualification for full citizenship.

To permit none to vote who are unable to read and write, would sadly diminish the present number of voters, and the advocates of this plan do not propose to disfranchise any who are now electors. But it would be manifestly unjust to continue the right of the present illiterate voters to the ballot, and exclude a similar class from the polls, hereafter, on attaining their majority, on the ground of their ignorance. The safety of the Republic is the supreme law, and if an ignorant voter endangers the Republic, why not strike at the heart of the danger at once, and exclude all ignorant men from the polls? But would this remove the danger? Would it not be still more dangerous to have a large class of citizens excluded from all political rights and treated as aliens and enemies? Could we afford thus to violate the fundamental principles of republican government, that it is founded on the consent of the governed, and that those who pay taxes and bear arms to support the Government should have a voice in its administration? Is it not better to try the educating and elevating power of the ballot, in connection with free schools, a free press and a free gospel, to make them good citizens and bind them in perpetual allegiance to the Government, than to place them, by disfranchisement, in the condition of serfs, and tempt them, if not force them, by distrust and degradation, into a po

sition of disloyalty and hostility? They are to remain with us, and form an integral part of the Republic. Shall we make them friends or enemies?

Knowledge is a good thing in itself, but it is not the only, nor the highest, qualification for good citizenship. It is not a substitute for honesty, loyalty and patriotism. It may be perverted to the basest and most treasonable ends. It was the educated classes of the South that inaugurated and maintained, on so many bloody battle-fields, the wickedest and most inexcusable rebellion known in history. It was the Vallandighams, and Clay Deans, Chauncey Burrs and Seymours of the North, who gave the Southern conspirators aid and comfort. And it was the illiterate colored men of the South, bond and free, and their kindred of the North, who were loyal throughout to the Government and the Union. Surely dark-skinned loyalists are better citizens, and more deserving of trust, than white-livered traitors. And it would be a great national wrong, as well as a dangerous experiment, to reinvest unrepentant rebels, filled with hatred to the Government and loyal people of the country, with the rights of citizenship, and not secure to the loyal race of colored citizens, many of whom periled their lives for the Government, the sacred right and invincible shield of the ballot.

The ballot, if I have truly stated the principles of republican government, belongs to every citizen of mature age, guiltless of crime, as a right. It is not something which the Government may bestow or withhold at pleasure. It belongs to the category of inalienable rights defined in the Declaration of Independence, as "the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and is the only sure guaranty of those rights. The rights of all are endangered while the rights of one are insecure. If the Government may disfranchise one for his poverty, another for his want of learn

ing, and another for the color of his skin, it may invent excuses for disfranchising the great body of voters, and confine suffrage to the office-holders and their immediate retainers. If it canot protect the equal rights of all, it can guaranty the rights of none. It is not the business of the Government to confer rights upon the people, but simply to declare their rights and protect them. Shall the thing formed dictate to the power that formed it? Republican government is of the people, by the people, and for the people-the whole peopleand any other theory perverts it to an aristocracy and leads to despotism.

It is no answer to say that this has not been the practice of the Government -that a large class have been treated as political outlaws, who, in the language of the late Chief Justice Taney, had "no rights which white men were bound to respect." It was because slavery had polluted the temple of freedom, seized the reins of government, and poisoned the fountains of justice. In the first years of the Republic, colored men voted in North Carolina, New Jersey, and one or two other slave States. But, under the rule of the Slave Power, the Government was rapidly drifting into an odious oligarchy, in which all offices and emoluments were held by the tenure of fealty to slavery. The slaveholders held every federal officer, from President to tidewaiter and light-house keeper, like the lords of feudal times, in complete vassalage to their own interests. They enacted cruel and inhuman laws to retain their slaves in bondage, and compelled Northern freemen, under pain of fine and imprisonment, to become their slave-catchers. In all this goodly land of ours there was practically not one foot of territory consecrated to freedomnot one rood of free soil over which the slave-catcher might not pursue his victim, as the hunter pursues the ravening wolf, to captivity or death. And the fugitive-slave act-that legalized mob