p. 157 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 20, 1867

The New Ordeal.

FOREWARNED is forewarned; and though it is comfortable to take the optimistic view of events, and always the right thing to hope for the best under all circumstances, we are not to close our eyes to obvious facts, or to refuse to understand the tendency of things because it is not what we would like to believe. The

Earl of Shaftesbury was not talking utter nonsense when he quoted Senator Wade's Kansas speech as showing one of the dangerous tendencies of universal suffrage. More accurately speaking, it is the debasing tendency of ignorant suffrage against which there is need of warning. Whenever a considerable class of voters are illiterate and uninformed upon public questions, demagogism flourishes naturally, and there is a tendency even among party leaders of average wisdom and integrity to descend to low and dishonest arts, and cater to the prejudices of the multitude. This has always been an element of weakness and corruption in our politics. In the best-taught communities, where the people are trained in public schools, it is not entirely absent; and in the communities of the South and West, where the masses have had little opportunities for education, it has made our elections too often mere games of trickery and deception, in which the loudest brawler, the most impudent charlatan, and the most conscienceless panderer to the prejudices of the rabble was sure to win. We have increased this element by the rapid naturalization of foreigners, till it governs some of the chief cities; and our demagogues who control it thus secure themselves in power, whatever abuses they may commit.

To the foreign element we are now adding a still larger one, more untaught and quite as susceptible of easy control; and very soon we shall add another in the hundreds of thousands of Asiatics who are pouring into the Pacific states, into whose heads the first idea of self-government has never entered. For we cannot go backward; we must go through with the experiment we have undertaken, for weal or woe. If we are to complete it successfully it will not be by refusing to recognize its possibilities of evil, but by foreseeing and providing against them, so far as that is now in our power. There are many thoughtful men who believe that the severest ordeal of our institutions is yet to come, and through this unlimited and unqualified extension of the suffrage. Nor does it relieve this apprehension to insist that the theory of universal suffrage is right; that whoever must support the government and obey the laws should have a voice in the making of the laws and the selection of their administrators. Those who have established the government, and maintained it at a great cost of treasure and blood, are not to yield such blind and unqualified allegiance to a theory as to surrender the control of affairs to those manifestly incapable of perpetuating free institutions. If the Chinese and Japanese should outnumber the Americans in California, it does not follow that they must be allowed to rule that State. Sufficient probation and preparation may at least be required, to fit them to comprehend their rights and duties as free citizens of a republic, without doing violence to the democratic theory. Michigan proposes to give suffrage to its Indians, and they are so few and so far civilized that there is no danger in the experiment. If they were numerous enough to outvote the white citizens, the latter might well hesitate before surrendering the state to their keeping.

The freedmen of the South are better fitted for full citizenship than either the Indians or Asiatics. They have seen freedom and longed for it all their lives; their instincts are right, and they are docile and eager to learn. The experiment of suffrage is tried by them under peculiarly favorable circumstances, and they are pretty certain to go right at first, substantially, through their connection with the party that has given them their liberty and clothed them with political power. But they are a nation of children, in knowledge and self-control. They are just beginning with the rudiments. The ten-year-old schoolboys of Massachusetts are infinitely better fitted for the exercise of political power. And their very docility and implicit trust in those who profess to be their friends exposes them to the arts of the demagogues. This was illustrated in the Richmond convention, last week. Even Hunnicutt saw the importance of holding the white Unionists of Virginia in the republican party, and endeavored to secure them a hearing and fair treatment in the convention; but the petty demagogues circulating through the black mass were stronger than Hunnicutt, much as the freedmen trust him, and they disregarded his advice. The same class controls the freedmen at Charleston, and in most of the southern cities. And they hold them by promising to share among them the property of the South, to be confiscated for their benefit. When the negroes find that these and other promises cannot be kept, there will be danger that they will forsake not only the demagogues who have deluded them, but the party in whose name false promises have been made. The negro vote is secure for the republicans in the reconstruction elections; beyond that everything is uncertain and must be provided for. Or, if the freedmen control the new governments of the reconstructed states, how they will use their power is a matter for no little doubt and apprehension.

Education before the ballot, and as the essential preparation for it, would have averted in a great measure these and other dangers. The soundness of the principle was confessed, but stress of party necessity overruled its application. As the next best thing we must press every means of education in connection with the ballot. The northern schools in the South should be more liberally sustained. They are as yet but a drop in the bucket to the immense need. Mr. Peabody's munificence should be brought into working effect as rapidly as possible. And the necessity for general education should be the constant theme of our Christian and political missionaries in the South. The establishment of a compulsory educational system by Congress for the South is not likely to be attempted; but if Congress may exhaust the treasury in feeding the southern poor, it may certainly do something for the instruction of her ignorant masses. At all events, and by all means and instrumentalities, the education of the people is to be secured. Accomplishing this soon enough, we shall pass through the great ordeal unscathed, and free institutions will stand. Neglecting it, who can say what ignorant suffrage and uncontrolled demagogues may bring in the next quarter of a century? There are evils more to be dreaded than war.—Springfield Repub.