As a general rule sound policy requires that the legislature should yield to the wishes of a people, when not inconsistent with the constitution and the laws.  The measures suited to one community might not be well adapted to the condition of another; and the persons best qualified to determine such questions are those whose interests are to be directly affected by any proposed law.  In Massachusetts, for instance, male persons are allowed to vote without regard to color, provided they possess a certain degree of intelligence.  In a population in that State of 1,231,066 there were, by the census of 1860, only 9,602 persons of color, and of the males over 20 years of age there were 339,086 white to 2,602 colored.  By the same official enumeration there were in the District of Columbia 60,764 whites to 14,316 persons of the colored race.  Since then, however, the population of the District has largely increased, and it is estimated that at the present time there are nearly 100,000 whites to 30,000 negroes.  The cause of the augmented numbers of the latter class needs no explanation.  Contiguous to Maryland and Virginia, the District during the war became a place of refuge for those who escaped from servitude, and it is yet the abiding place of a considerable proportion of those who sought within its limits a shelter from bondage.  Until then held in slavery and denied all opportunities for mental culture, their first knowledge of the Government was acquired when, by conferring upon them freedom, it became the benefactor of their race.  The test of their capability for improvement began when for the first time the career of free industry and the avenues to intelligence were opened to them.  Possessing these advantages but a limited time—­the greater number perhaps having entered the District of Columbia during the later years of the war, or since its termination—­we may well pause to inquire whether, after so brief a probation, they are as a class capable of an intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage and qualified to discharge the duties of official position.  The people who are daily witnesses of their mode of living, and who have become familiar with their habits of thought, have expressed the conviction that they are not yet competent to serve as electors, and thus become eligible for office in the local governments under which they live.  Clothed with the elective franchise, their numbers, already largely in excess of the demand for labor, would be soon increased by an influx from the adjoining States.  Drawn from fields where employment is abundant, they would in vain seek it here, and so add to the embarrassments already experienced from the large class of idle persons congregated in the District.  Hardly yet capable of forming correct judgments upon the important questions that often make the issues of a political contest, they could readily be made subservient to the purposes of designing persons.  While in Massachusetts, under the census of 1860,