no more shooting stars with any consent of
ours." But really this matter is of more interest to heralds of arms
than to practical men. The difference between Congress and the
President is not, as Mr. Seward would insinuate, that Congress or
anybody else wishes to keep the ten States out, but that the Radical
party (we cheerfully accept our share in the opprobrium of the name)
insists that they shall come in on a footing of perfect equality with
the rest; while the President would reward them for rebellion by giving
them an additional weight of nearly one half in the national councils.
The cry of "Taxation without representation" is foolish enough as
raised by the Philadelphia Convention, for do we not tax every
foreigner that comes to us while he is in process of becoming a citizen
and a voter? But under the Johnsonian theory of reconstruction, we
shall leave a population which is now four millions not only taxed
without representation, but doomed to be so forever without any
reasonable hope of relief. The true point is not as to the abstract
merits of universal suffrage (though we believe it the only way toward
an enlightened democracy and the only safeguard of popular government),
but as to whether we shall leave the freedmen without the only adequate
means of self-defence. And however it may be now, the twenty-six States
certainly _were_ the Union when they accepted the aid of these people
and pledged the faith of the government to their protection. Jamaica,
at the end of nearly thirty years since emancipation, shows us how
competent former masters are to accomplish the elevation of their
liberated slaves, even though their own interests would prompt them to
it. Surely it is a strange plea to be effective in a democratic
country, that we owe these people nothing because they cannot help
themselves; as if governments were instituted for the care of the
strong only. The argument against their voting which is based upon
their ignorance strikes us oddly in the mouths of those whose own hope
of votes lies in the ignorance, or, what is often worse, the prejudice,
of the voters. Besides, we do not demand that the seceding States
should at once confer the right of suffrage on the blacks, but only
that they should give them the same chance to attain it, and the same
inducement to make themselves worthy of it, as to every one else. The
answer that they have not the right in some of the Northern States may
be a reproach to the