traditions of Oxford are taken into account. The proposed change at Cambridge is much more radical and inclusive; all candidates for a degree, under this modification of existing conditions, would be exempt from the study of Greek, unless they voluntarily elected it. The discussion lasted three days, and was then postponed until some time after The arguments presented Christmas. turned largely on the elements which the Greek language and literature bring into education. Professor Jebb, who has now An Argument become Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, the eminent professor of Greek at Cambridge, whose delightful lectures on Greek literature on the Percy Turnbull foundation at the Johns Hopkins University have not been forgotten, contributed a good deal of humor to the discussion by presenting New Zealand as a land without Greek and then showing what happens in such a land. A professor in New Zealand, Sir Richard declared, had heard "Andromache " pronounced "Andromash," and "Boötes " Boots," and had actually seen in print the words "Cupid and Sich." These references to New Zealand have evoked a tempest of wrath on the part of residents of that country who happen to be in England; and what started as a discussion of the merits of classical education has now widened into what may be called a colonial controversy. Lovers of the classical-and there are not a few, in spite of the prevalence of scientific ideas in education-will be very reluctant to have Oxford and Cambridge surrender those traditions which have made them in large measure centers of culture for generations, and will find much to commend in Mr. Churton Collins's argument in the "Nineteenth Century." Mr. Collins is an extremely capable and outspoken literary critic. After pointing out that the Rhodes bequest is likely to bind together all parts of Greater Britain and to establish a closer relationship between all parts of the English-speaking peoples, Mr. Collins claims a kind of educational leadership for Oxford and Cambridge in this great federation, not because of their age or their educational superiority-for science and some other studies are probably better taught elsewhere-but because they are "centers of the humanities in the most comprehensive sense of the term." By virtue of their relationship to the humanities, and by virtue of that relationship alone-not by virtue of what they simhere and over the sea-can Oxford and Camply share in common with other universities bridge claim that place which every Englishspeaking nation gladly and proudly concedes to them. To subordinate the interest of the humanities to the interest of science, as is becoming, perhaps inevitably, more and more the tendency in both universities, is deliberately to dethrone themselves. A correspondent of the New York "Tribune," who has made a study of the American students at Oxford, reports that the classics take a second place with these students, the greatest number devoting themselves to the School of Law, while less than one-third enter for science, modern languages, literature, and theology. There are hundreds of institutions in which scientific education, both abstract and professional, is taught in every possible form; there would be no injustice, therefore, in continuing to give the humanities their ancient predominance in the two oldest universities in the English-speaking world. Christian Union in Canada During Christmas week an important conference was held in Toronto. About a hundred and fifty representatives of the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational Churches assembled, pursuant to instructions of the chief courts of these several bodies, to see if an organic union were practicable. From adverse criticism and comment which had appeared in the newspapers, much fear was felt lest the movement should be blocked at the very start. The recent death of Principal Caven, to whom the movement largely owed its inception, and who in the delirium of his final illness dwelt much upon it, was felt to be an irreparable loss. Dr. Warden, Missionary Secretary of the Presbyterian Church, was made permanent Chairman, and the Rev. Dr. Sutherland, Missionary Secretary of the Methodist Church, Secretary of the joint conference. Dr. Warden read the great prayer of our Lord for his Church in the seventeenth chapter of John, and St. Paul's panegyric on love in the thirteenth of First Corinthians, and several leading ministers led in prayer. He then stated the history of the movement: that it sprang out of a proposition of the General Conference of the Methodist Church in Canada, and had won the concurrence of the Presbyterian General Assembly and of the Congregational Union. The day was spent in consideration of questions of doctrine, polity, and the office and training of the ministry. The representatives of the different Churches vied with one another in kindly and Christian courtesy. While some difficulties were frankly stated, yet they were met in a most brotherly spirit of conciliation. The delegations of the several Churches met separately in the evening to decide whether they should go forward to the appointment of committees for working out details of a proposed basis of union. This was a vital and crucial occasion, for lack of concurrence here might wreck the whole movement. The reports to the joint conference all expressed cordial concurrence. Committees were nominated of forty each on doctrine, polity, administration, the ministry, and of fifteen on law. These will report to later sessions of the joint committee. A great religious movement has thus advanced another stage in its progress. The Christmac Festival at Bethlehem No other community in the United States, probably, could celebrate the Nativity as Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, celebrated it last week. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Bach's cheerful and moving "Christmas Oratorio," interspersed with other compositions by Bach, including the stirring five-part "Magnificat" and the wonderful unaccompanied eight-part motet "Sing ye to the Lord," was given in the Moravian Church. The chorus consisted of the Bach Choir, a musical institution of which the whole country has reason to be proud, composed of voices from Bethlehem and neighboring towns. The orchestra consisted mainly of amateur players. The soloists, with two or three exceptions, were professional singers. The conductor was Mr. J. Fred Wolle, whose intimacy with the works of Bach, whose genius for leadership, and whose unspoiled enthusiasm made this festival possible. The occasion was genuinely a celebration rather than a performance. Technical excellence there was, especially in the spirited singing of the chorus, every member of which sang with heart as well as voice. The immensely difficult choral works of Bach, so far from discouraging these singers, have awakened in them an ambition that has increased with every year since the Bach Choir was organized. More than that, they have created in Bethlehem a musical spirit without which technical excellence is as a tinkling cymbal. It is doubtful whether anywhere else in America the emotional quality of Bach's music is interpreted as it is in this Pennsylvania town. Bach wrote most of his choral works in honor of the various church seasons and for performance in the Protestant church of which he was cantor. The traditions of the Moravian Church in Bethlehem are such that these works are naturally given in Bethlehem under conditions such as those to which these works were originally adapted. The Christmas Festival, consisting of works grouped about the Nativity, will be succeeded on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of next April by a Lenten Festival, consisting of the St. John Passion Music and other Passion-tide music, and on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of next June by an Easter and Ascension Festival, when the Mass in B minor will be given, with other works of Bach appropriate for the Children's Aid Society has been engaged in this work for more than half a century, and, as always, its annual report place to the policy of permanent and self-sustaining business. shows an amazing amount of practicable, Reduction of Southern sensible, and profitable endeavor. Thus, to take but a few of many graphic figures, over thirteen thousand children have received relief in their homes, over fourteen thousand have been enrolled in the Industrial Schools, over twenty thousand children and women have had outings in the country or at the seaside, while 464 children have been placed permanently in family homes. What such facts as these indicate statistically is brought out in the way of human feeling through the incidents told and the letters received from those who have been helped-both touching and stimulating are these details, which show that the Society puts into everything it does patience, discrimination, and kindliness. Nearly half a million dollars has been paid out by the Society in a year, and it could readily use double the amount for its varied forms of effective help and instruction. The Secretary, Mr. C. Loring Brace (105 East Twenty-second Street, New York), would be glad to send information or to receive contributions to this most worthy and necessary charity. Forestry in New Hampshire Of It has long been supposed that the New Hampshire forests were being cut away faster than were those in any other part of the country; but we would seem now to have reached a pause in the wholesale tree-destruction hitherto characteristic of that State. their own accord, many New Hampshire landowners and lumbermen have adopted a policy, first, of more gradual cutting, and, secondly, of replacement. The experience of Europe has now actually touched the mind even of the hardheaded but short-sighted dealer in lumber; he has come to realize that his tracts of forest should yield to him not only present but future profits, even if, in order to reap the latter, there must be some immediate sacrifice and abstention. We are glad to record the fact that the policy of quick returns among the lumbermen is now beginning to give Representation in We advise those of our readers who do not keep The Outlook on file to cut out for future reference the paragraph and table on another page concerning the Southern vote in the recent National elections. The figures there given make it clear that the proportion which the votes cast by white voters bears to the white population in certain Southern States is in striking contrast with the proportion which the votes cast by white voters bears to the white population in Northern States possessing approximately the same population. Whether this is because the amended Constitutions in the South excluding the illiterate and the paupers from the suffrage have disfranchised more white voters than the North has generally supposed, or because the full white vote of the South has not been brought out, owing to the political apathy caused by the fact that the South is solidly Democratic, so that the result of the election is known beforehand, in either case it is clear that the ratio which the votes cast bears to the population does not of itself establish the fact that the negro has been disfranchised, still less does it afford any measure of the extent of such disfranchisement. Broadly speaking, the South may be said to believe in a qualified or limited suffrage, the North in an unqualified and unlimited suffrage. So far as this states the difference between the sections, we agree with the position of the South. We think the suffrage is not a natural right to be exercised by every man who has come to years of discretion, but an acquired prerogative to be conferred upon those who have established, as a condition precedent, the ability to exercise it honestly and intelligently. The qualifications for such exercise should be very simple. They should be such that any man of reasonable ability and integrity may be able to comply with them. The conditions of suffrage embodied in the Southern State Constitutions appear to us not unreasonable. According to those Southern Constitutions, any man, black or white, may vote if he has education enough to read and write the English language, thrift enough to possess three hundred dollars' worth of taxable property, and patriotism enough to have paid his poll tax. We should rather see the qualifications for suffrage raised to this standard in the North than lowered below it in the South. This is not, however, the only question raised by the proposal to reduce the representation of Southern States in Congress. That proposal involves a very fundamental problem: On what, in a democratic community, should representation be based? There are three bases possible, and all three have been actual in political history. (1) Representation may be based upon the existence of a definitely organic community, regardless of what the size of the population or the number of voters may be. Thus, every State in the Union is represented by two Senators in the United States Senate. Rhode Island, with its population of less than half a million, has the same representation as New York, with its population of over seven millions; Texas, with its population of three millions, as Florida, with its population of a little over half a million. (2) The representation may be based upon the number of voters. This was not the basis of representation according to the original Constitution; but it was made a basis of representation by the XIVth Amendment, not for all the States, but for any State which by any action taken subsequent to that Amendment should deny or abridge the right to vote for any other cause than participation in crime. The language of the Amendment is as follows: "When the right to vote . . . is denied to any male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State." (3) The third basis of representation is that which prevails in most States of the Union in State elections, and which prevails in all States of the Union in all Federal elections, except as the basis is changed by the clause above quoted. In most, if not all, States of the Union in State elections, and in all States of the Union which have not since the adoption of the XIVth Amendment modified the conditions of suffrage, representation is based, not upon the number of voters, but upon the number of the population. Representatives," says the Constitution, "shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." Thus, comparing two Northern States: Massachusetts in the last Presidential election cast 445,000 votes. She is represented by fourteen Representatives, because she has a population approximating three millions. Iowa cast 485,000 votes, forty thousand more than Massachusetts; she has but eleven Representatives in Congress, because her population is only a little more than two million three hundred thousand. Massachusetts has a qualified, Iowa a relatively unqualified, suffrage. In our judgment, the representation in a republic should be apportioned according to population, not according to the number of voters. The representative is not elected to represent the voters, but to represent the population. If in a given election district a Republican is elected by fifty majority and goes to Congress, he does not go to represent merely the Republicans who voted for him, he certainly does not go to represent as a body the Democrats who voted against him; he goes because he is elected by a majority of the voters to represent the entire district, the women as well as the men, the non-voters as well as the voters, and the minority that voted against him only as he represents the entire population. This is the basis of representation, we think, in the Constitutions of all the States, certainly in the Constitution of the United States, except as it has been modified by the XIVth Amendment. Granted, however, that there is something to be said for the theory that representation in Congress should be apportioned according to the number of voters in the State, and something to be said for the theory that it should be apportioned to the population of the State, there is nothing to be said for the theory that in some of the States it should be apportioned according to the number of voters, and in others according to the population. But this is what the XIVth Amendment in effect provides. It makes an unjust discrimination between the States. It provides a different basis of representation for different States. For those whose suffrage has been changed since the adoption of the XIVth Amendment it bases representation on the number of voters; for those whose conditions have not been changed since the adoption of the XIVth Amendment it bases representation on the size of the population. It is not right to inflict this penalty upon States which by Constitutional methods limit the suffrage, provided that limitation is not based on race or color. This is the one fundamental principle which those who are demanding a reduction of Southern representation in Congress must consider. avowed ground for reducing such representation is that certain Southern States have by their recently adopted Constitutions disfranchised the negro. This is not true. Their Constitutions have not disfranchised the negro; if they are disfranchised, it is not by these Constitutions, but in spite of them. But if it were true, it would not be right for Congress to reduce the representation, and allow the disfranchisement of the negro, because he is a negro, to remain. Some Southern journals are advocating such a reduction of representation, because when it has been effected by the North, the North can no longer demand suffrage for the negro on the same conditions as suffrage for the white man. They are right in thinking that if the North does thus reduce representation, it will deprive itself of the right to demand suffrage for the negro, whose disfranchisement it has accepted as the basis of its political action. The Constitution provides in the XVth Amendment that "the right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' If this clause of the Constitution has been violated, it is the business of Congress not to accede to the violation and reduce the political power of any State which has been guilty of the violation; it is the duty of Congress to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent such violation and to secure the restoration of the suffrage to any one who has been deprived of it on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. But if the Republican party should reduce the representation of any Southern State on the avowed ground that it has denied the right of suffrage to citizens of the United States on account of their race or color, it would effectually estop itself from demanding that such persons should exercise the right of suffrage which had been unconstitutionally denied to them. In other words, it would concede that the negro might be denied all his Constitutional rights, provided the North could get in return a larger relative representation in ConThe gress. Whatever the intent of those The Outlook is opposed to any such proposed reduction, for four fundamental reasons. I. Such reduction, based on the number of voters in the Southern States, assumes that the members in Congress are elected to represent the voters. They are not elected to represent the voters; they are elected to represent the population-the non-voting population, as the women and children, no less than the voting population. II. It establishes two bases of representation-one, the number of voters for certain States; the other, the entire population for other States. It is unjust to condition the Congressional representation of Southern States upon the number of votes cast, and of Northern States upon the size of the population. If the representation is to be based in any State upon the number of votes cast, it should be based in all the States upon the number of votes cast. III. It is unjust to the negro. |