e ground for reducing a State's representation in
Congress. But when it has been said that the proposed measure of
reduction is permissible under the Constitution, there is nothing more
in its favor. From the standpoint of its proposers, it would be only
half-effective, for it could reach only those debarred by actual want
of property or education; the larger exclusion by the unfair
administration of election officers is an individual matter, beyond the
cognizance of statute-books. But the weighty objection is that it would
recognize, accept and confirm that very exclusion of the negro vote
against which it professes to be aimed. It would only enforce a penalty,
from which the gain would accrue solely to the Republican majority in
Congress and the electoral college. The Republican party, it is safe to
say, has too much virtue and intelligence in its rank and file to accept
such a gain at such a cost. For the cost would be a bitter intensifying
of race and sectional hostility. The Southern negro, his
disfranchisement accepted and ratified by the North, would be freshly
odious to his white neighbors on whom he had unconsciously brought this
humiliation. The fast closing breach between the North and South would
have a sharp and heavy wedge of division driven in. The peaceful forward
movement of the nation--for forward it is, spite of some lurches and
staggers--would be set back by a return to the old methods of sectional
conflict. But indeed the proposal hardly merits so much space as has
here been given it. It is a scheme of politicians and not of the people,
unhopeful even as a political scheme, unsupported by the sober thought
of the North, utterly unlikely to be realized or seriously attempted.

There is another kind of legislative action which may well be seriously
considered. Would it not be wise, just, and statesmanlike, for the
nation to give financial aid to the tremendous work of public education
with which the South is struggling? The Blair bill for this purpose,--in
a word, an appropriation of $100,000,000, running through ten years, on
the basis of illiteracy,--came very near success in Congress. It was
defeated by an ardent championship in the North of local independence
and self-reliance. It is questionable whether that championship was not
misdirected. Here are States burdening themselves beyond their Northern
neighbors, to give schooling for only a third of a year, and necessarily
sometimes of inferior qual