d passions of half a century
ago which gave the negro the suffrage and put him on a plane of
political equality with his late masters.[303:1] If, since then, the
problem has grown more, rather than less, difficult, it has not been so
much by the fault of the Southern white, living under conditions in
which only one line of conduct has been open to him, as of Northern
philanthropists and negro sympathisers who have helped to keep alive in
the breasts of the coloured population ideas and ambitions which can
never be realised.

The people of the North have of late years come to understand the South
better, and whereas what I have said above would, twenty years ago, have
found few sympathisers in any Northern city, I believe that to-day it
expresses the opinion of the large majority of Northern men. I also
believe that the necessary majority could be secured to repeal so much
of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution as would
be necessary to undo the mistake which has been committed. It is true
that in some Southern States the majority of the blacks are practically
disfranchised now; but it would remove a constant cause of friction and
of political chicanery if the fact were recognised frankly that it is
not possible to contemplate the possibility of the negro ever becoming
the politically dominant race in any community where white people live.
There is no reason to believe that the two races cannot live together
comfortably even though the blacks be in a large majority, but there
must be no question of white control of the local government and of the
machinery of justice.

Taking away the franchise from the negro would not, of course, put an
end to many of the social difficulties of the situation, but, the
present false relations between the two being abolished, those
difficulties are no more than have to be dealt with in every community.
There would be a chance for the negroes as a race to develop into useful
members of the community, _as negroes_, filling the stations of negroes
and doing negroes' work, along such lines as those on which Mr. Booker
Washington is working. The English have had a wide experience of native
races in all parts of the world and they have not yet found the problem
of living with them and of holding at least their respect, together with
some measure of their active good-will, anywhere insoluble. To an
Englishman it does not seem that it should be insoluble in the United
Sta