ave some power,--they must be backed by the best public opinion of
these communities, and able to wield for their objects and aims such
weapons as the experience of the world has taught are indispensable to
human progress.

Of such weapons the greatest, perhaps, in the modern world is the power
of the ballot; and this brings me to a consideration of the third form
of contact between whites and blacks in the South,--political activity.

In the attitude of the American mind toward Negro suffrage can be
traced with unusual accuracy the prevalent conceptions of government.
In the fifties we were near enough the echoes of the French Revolution
to believe pretty thoroughly in universal suffrage. We argued, as we
thought then rather logically, that no social class was so good, so
true, and so disinterested as to be trusted wholly with the political
destiny of its neighbors; that in every state the best arbiters of
their own welfare are the persons directly affected; consequently that
it is only by arming every hand with a ballot,--with the right to have
a voice in the policy of the state,--that the greatest good to the
greatest number could be attained. To be sure, there were objections
to these arguments, but we thought we had answered them tersely and
convincingly; if some one complained of the ignorance of voters, we
answered, "Educate them." If another complained of their venality, we
replied, "Disfranchise them or put them in jail." And, finally, to the
men who feared demagogues and the natural perversity of some human
beings we insisted that time and bitter experience would teach the most
hardheaded. It was at this time that the question of Negro suffrage in
the South was raised. Here was a defenceless people suddenly made
free. How were they to be protected from those who did not believe in
their freedom and were determined to thwart it? Not by force, said the
North; not by government guardianship, said the South; then by the
ballot, the sole and legitimate defence of a free people, said the
Common Sense of the Nation. No one thought, at the time, that the
ex-slaves could use the ballot intelligently or very effectively; but
they did think that the possession of so great power by a great class
in the nation would compel their fellows to educate this class to its
intelligent use.

Meantime, new thoughts came to the nation: the inevitable period of
moral retrogression and political trickery that ever follows in