sire that is more boundless than your commerce, richer by far than your gold and silver and your gems, more yearned for by us than your broad harbors filled with the ladened ships of the nations, and more priceless to us than the fruit of your looms and your shops and your manufactories. Something before which gross utilitarianism and materialism are but ashes and dust. We want your love. Ours in all of its plenitude and richness we freely give to you, and withhold of it not a jot or a tittle. The winds to-night, whispering over the mountains of my far-away Southern home, softly sing of our boundless charity and love. The sweet Southern sun has long ago kissed away the crimson stains from our fields, and our hearts are as redolent of charity and love as the magnolia and the lily are of their sweetness and perfume. The nodding cotton ball and the meadows richly green are fast covering the rent and hurt of war. The great heart of the South is full and yearns for its once estranged brother with a love that passeth all understanding. Our old battle

flags are laid away in that hallowed ark of the household where lie the faded glove, the old lace collar, the worn garments, the little keepsakes, the lock of hair of our mothers, and the little worn child's shoe with sweet enchantment bringing to memory's silent halls the lullaby of little feet, and on those sacred days when with reverent hands we tenderly touch them and gently smooth away the wrinkles of time, the faint odor of rosemary and lavender breathes only of love and ten

derness. With outstretched hands, we of the South ask your love, your charity, and tenderness, and within the touch of the most memorial year when we on the battle-fields of the nation have commingled the consecrated blood of the North and the South, upon whomsoever for partisan purposes, or private or political gain, would rekindle the fires of sectional hate, we would invoke the thunders of Him who holds the nations in the hollow of His hand. Then, my brothers, with your strong arms about the South, strengthened, encouraged, united, and glorified, the world would hear the majestic and solemn tread of a free and constitutionloving people carrying its civilization and commerce and its religion to the nations of the uttermost parts of the earth. Without irreverence, with this great glory trembling upon us, in the words of the old Prophet of the Most High, "C Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and a nation that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee."

D

THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE

E TOCQUEVILLE, the aristocratic delineator of
American Democracy, narrates that in his trav-

els into the primeval America he arrived upon the shores of a crystal lake, embosomed in untouched forests; that in the midst of the lake was a beautiful islet, shaded to the banks with trees old as the daylight of time. He crossed over to the island and was delighted with the richness of the soil and the exuberance of growth of tree and flower, and was awed by the silence and beauty and solitude of the scene. However, amidst the majesty of this morning of nature, he found upon the island some remains of man. Upon careful inspection he discovered, amidst the glory of nature, where a European had made his home. But how changed! The logs of the cabin had fallen to the ground and had sprouted anew, and over their remains had grown the flower and the tree. The scattered stones of the hearth lay under the fallen chimney and were blackened with the old fire, and were over-scattered with the thin ashes of another day. He stood in silent admiration of the glories of nature and the littleness of man, and as he left the solitude he exclaimed with melancholy, "Are the ruins, then, already here?"

So, Mr. President, when I received from your able and courteous secretary the formulation of the question for discussion, which betokens within itself that, whilst we are in the very glory of the dawn of our day, the sacred temple of our hopes and love was broken, I was led to exclaim with the old philosopher, "Are the ruins, then, already here?"

In my poor way, I will this evening examine the sacred edifice, and we will together touch its walls and attempt to ascertain whether foundation and lintel and jam and turret stand true and plumb as when they left the hands of the master builders; for, as Mr. Lowell relates, when Guizot once asked "How long I thought the Republic would last?" "I replied," said he, “so long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant." Do we not all assent to his reply?

The formulation of the subject for investigation, "Does the experience of this Republic up to the close of the nineteenth century justify universal manhood suffrage, or should the elective franchise be limited by education, property, or other qualification," carries in it the most important and vital questions of our civil life.

The question is of to-day, and I will not take precious time to present the rubbish of the history of the franchise. A word, however, is necessary that we may intelligently grasp the conditions of the early days of the Republic and understand their influence upon the present. Being a Virginian, I will be excused by the in

dulgent audience for having taken Virginia as a general type showing the evolution of the present franchise condition.

The status in Virginia explains why the Fathers, when they annunciated the great salient principles of free government, a radical departure in the lines of government, did not also announce manhood suffrage, the present essence of democracy.

Necessarily, when the great truths of representative government were proclaimed by the Fathers, they could not at once disembarrass themselves from all of the accompaniments of government as theretofore experienced by them. It is generally understood that the limitation of suffrage to freeholders, which practically made an aristocratic government, and the equal representation of the counties, which was sectional, were voluntarily adopted by the people of Virginia. Such was not the case. This limitation of suffrage to freeholders was the result of the commands of the King of England, and these commands were enforced by the bayonets of two regiments of his soldiers, and it was without any act of assembly. Thus, at the time of the Revolution, for more than a century freehold government had been the practical law of the people. Yet it was contrary to the salient principles of the peoples' free government. The question then naturally arises, why was this system continued after the people had substituted their own in place of the rule of the King of England? This is frequently asked by