wind, with cloud, and a three days' rain. The temperature, without the slightest warning, tumbled forty degrees in a single night. The congealed Spectator warmly demanded fire. But there was no fire in the hotel, nor even so much as a chimney. In the little detached kitchen there was a cook-stove in which smoldered a few embers of wood, but even here no chimney, only a comfortless stovepipe. Moreover, the big black cook made the Spectator thoroughly aware that his room was better than his company. The other guests, swathed to the eyebrows in vast shawls, sat huddled up in speechless misery, and waited for the cold snap to be over. The Spectator, being shawlless, retired to the cold comfort of his bed. Such was his introduction to the delights of the tropics!

Of course time brought him juster impressions. There came days of perpetual sunshine, days and weeks without a cloud, when the air was so clear that the Spectator could almost count the grass-blades on the distant islands in the harbor. There were no shadows on the mountain-sides, no half-tones in the landscape; and when at last the great hot sun dipped below the horizon, night dropped like a curtain, black and sudden. It was very contrary of him, no doubt, but no sooner had the Spectator grown accustomed to this perfect weather than he began to wish it imperfect. He called the broad sunshine garish, and longed in an ecstasy of homesickness for the soft gray shadows stealing over a Berkshire hillside, for the witchery of twilight, for the patter of rain on the roof. Again, when tropical fruits became his daily portion, he wearied of their strangeness and their bland insipidity. He would have given all the mangoes and alligator-pears, nay, even the creamy pineapples and superb oranges, for the privilege of setting his teeth in a tart and juicy northern apple.

With the plant life of Rio it was much the same. The Spectator was prepared

for luxuriance and gorgeous bloom, and the flowers came up to his expectation. Roses bloomed the whole year through; bignonias and scarlet poinsettias were common in all the gardens. As for heliotrope, the Spectator knew one particular plant which attained to the dignity of a bush, growing full four feet high and spreading a prodigal profusion of deep purple blooms. Yet the Spectator was peevishly discontented with Brazilian gardens. The Portuguese gardener, since in Rio grass costs a king's ransom, surrounds his roses with a glaring carpet of white sea-sand; envious ants snip and carve away at the glowing petals, and weeds, growing with truly tropical luxuriance, create a lavish but picturesque disorder. Worst of all, Brazilian taste demands that the flower-gardens be studded generously with low posts bearing globes of cheap red and blue glass! The Spectator will put up cheerfully with the unprodigal bloom of the green north.

And now it is time to speak of that fortune the Spectator went out to amass.

Alas! that was the fondest of his illusions and the soonest dashed. The

princely salary, out of which he hoped to save a goodly nest-egg of capitalwhat of that?

It went to buy him illfitting English shoes at ruinous prices;

it went for whisk-brooms at three milreis

(about a dollar and a half) apiece, for potatoes from Portugal, for apples from New York at two dollars the dozen, the same being speckled with decay and strongly flavored of bilge-water. In short, it went for the bread-and-butter things of life, for which he paid at the price of luxuries. That was one side of the shield. The Spectator had gone to Brazil with half-formed plans for introducing the Brazilians to American conveniences. A year's stay convinced him

that the Brazilian is in love with inconvenience, that his business methods are not as our business methods, and that the American who wants to keep his temper had better not try to hurry the South,

a State in the South or in the Northprescribing an educational or property qualification can be considered as an abridgment of the privilege of suffrage within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Cooley, in his work entitled "The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America," in discussing the Fourteenth Amendment, says:

"To require the payment of capitation tax is no denial of suffrage; it is demanding only the preliminary performance of public duty, and may be classed, as may also presence at the polls, with registration, or the observance of any other preliminary to insure fairness and protect against fraud. Nor can it be said that to require ability to read is any denial of suffrage. To refuse to receive one's vote because he was born in some particular country rather than elsewhere, or because of his color, or because of any natural quality, or peculiarity, which it would be impossible for him to overcome, is plainly a denial of suffrage. But ability to read is something within the power of every man; it is not difficult to attain it, and it is no hardship to require it. On the contrary, the requirement only by indirection compels one to appropriate a personal benefit he might otherwise neglect. It denies to no man the suffrage, but the privilege is freely tendered to all, subject only to a condition that is beneficial in its performance and light in its burden."

There seems to be a misunderstanding in the minds of people generally as to the basis of representation in Congress. It is not apportioned upon the number of votes cast, but is based on the population in the States respectively. A study of the returns through a series of years would show that it frequently occurs, both in the North and in the South, that the absence of a contest reduces the number of votes, whereas a spirited contest brings out a full vote, often showing great disparity in the same locality under different conditions. This, in itself, would be sufficient to show how impracticable it would be to base representation upon the vote as actually cast.

Second, as to the Fifteenth Amend

ment. This Amendment, as has more than once been declared by the Supreme Court of the United States, does not confer the right to vote, but protects the negro from being discriminated against on account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

At the formation of the Federal Government there was a party, headed by Edmund Randolph, which favored making the qualifications of citizenship the same in all the States; but Benjamin Franklin and others opposed it, on the ground that it was a subject on which the people were jealous, and it would not be well to excite their opposition by depriving some of them of the right to vote as to Federal officers, when the same citizen might have the right to vote for State officers. It was, therefore, determined, after full discussion, to leave the question of fixing the qualifications of voters to the States respectively, and the following provision was adopted and has remained unchanged as a part of the Federal Constitution:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the

qualifications requisite for the electors in the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.

The same rule obtains with reference to the selection of Presidential electors, the whole question, by the terms of the Constitution and the action of the Convention, being left to the States, each of which was to "appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in Congress."

Now, the new Constitutions of the Southern States, and especially the new Constitution of the State of Alabama, with which I am more familiar, do not discriminate against the negro on account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude, within the inhibition of the Fifteenth Amendment. The permanent provision now in force is not materially different from that of the State of Massachusetts, in that it prescribes that every citizen, whether white or black, who can read or write any

clause of the Federal Constitution in the English language is entitled to vote. This provision was intended, and has the effect, to put the control of the Government in the hands of the intelligent and virtuous; but it is objected by our opponents that we, in the temporary plan, excepted certain classes of our citizens from the operation of the educational clause embodied in the permanent plan. I grant it. In doing so,

what more did we do than did the State of Massachusetts ? The election law of that State, as I understand it, provides that the voter must be able to read the Constitution of the Commonwealth in the English language, and to write his name, 'except that no person who is prevented from reading and writing as aforesaid by physical disability, or who had the right to vote on the first day of May, in the year 1857, shall, if otherwise qualified, be deprived of the right to vote by reason of not being able to read or write."

The truth is that every statesman who proposes legislation for the benefit of his people must proceed along practical lines. If his measure is to be submitted for the ratification of the voters, it would be supreme folly for him to expect them to accept and approve a measure which, by its terms, proposes a qualification which would exclude them. Hence it is that every such measure, whether submitted for the ratification of voters in the South or in the North, must contain a saving clause which protects the rights of existing voters, or such a number of existing voters as will give reasonable promise of its acceptance. Hence the insertion of the saving clause in the Alabama Constitution which protects the right to vote of all who fought the battles of the country without regard to the army in which they enlisted, Federal or Confederate.

The charge made against us is that we adopted this constitutional provision for the purpose of excluding the negro. The true philosophy of the movement was to establish restricted suffrage, and to place the power of government in the hands of the intelligent and virtuous; and while any provision for restricted

suffrage would exclude more negroes than white men, in its practical operation the Alabama provision, so far as the permanent plan is concerned, and the exaction of a poll tax as a condition to suffrage, so operates as to exclude not only a large mass of negro voters, but quite a number of white voters who do not feel sufficient interest in their own Government to contribute to the school fund the small amount exacted as a poll tax, and who are so indifferent to their own interests as that they fail to meet the provision of the Constitution which requires that any voter under the permanent plan shall be able to read and write any clause of the Constitution in the English language, although the free public schools of the State are open to them.

As stated by Judge Cooley, the right of suffrage is not a natural right, because it exists, where it is allowed to be exercised, only for the good of the State. To say that those whose participation in the affairs of the State would endanger and imperil the good of the State have, nevertheless, the right to participate, is not only folly in itself, but it is to set the individual above the State.

You will hear it frequently said that the provisions of the Southern Constitutions which protect the right of the worthy and intelligent negro to vote are not fairly enforced. We have but one case arising in this State which puts this question to the test. In the county of Limestone in this State a negro who had fought in the Union army claimed the right to register under what is commonly designated as the grandfather clause in the temporary plan of the new Constitution of Alabama. The right was denied by the registrars in that county, whereupon he appealed to the Circuit Court, under a provision of the Constitution authorizing such appeal without cost by any person whose right is denied. In that court his right was passed upon by a jury composed entirely of white men. The court and jury upheld his right to vote, and this right, upon an appeal prosecuted by the registrars in the name of the State, was sustained by the Supreme Court of Alabama.