for a people who have said, with one voice, that it is not for their good.  This alone should make us pause, but it is not all.  The experiment has not been tried, or so much as demanded, by the people of the several States for themselves.  In but few of the States has such an innovation been allowed as giving the ballot to the colored population without any other qualification than a residence of one year, and in most of them the denial of the ballot to this race is absolute and by fundamental law placed beyond the domain of ordinary legislation.  In most of those States the evil of such suffrage would be partial, but, small as it would be, it is guarded by constitutional barriers.  Here the innovation assumes formidable proportions, which may easily grow to such an extent as to make the white population a subordinate element in the body politic.

After full deliberation upon this measure, I can not bring myself to approve it, even upon local considerations, nor yet as the beginning of an experiment on a larger scale.  I yield to no one in attachment to that rule of general suffrage which distinguishes our policy as a nation.  But there is a limit, wisely observed hitherto, which makes the ballot a privilege and a trust, and which requires of some classes a time suitable for probation and preparation.  To give it indiscriminately to a new class, wholly unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to perform the trust which it demands, is to degrade it, and finally to destroy its power, for it may be safely assumed that no political truth is better established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

WASHINGTON, January 28, 1867.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I return to the Senate, in which House it originated, a bill entitled “An act to admit the State of Colorado into the Union,” to which I can not, consistently with my sense of duty, give my approval.  With the exception of an additional section, containing new provisions, it is substantially the same as the bill of a similar title passed by Congress during the last session, submitted to the President for his approval, returned with the objections contained in a message bearing date the 15th of May last, and yet awaiting the reconsideration of the Senate.

A second bill, having in view the same purpose, has now passed both Houses of Congress and been presented for my signature.  Having again carefully considered the subject, I have been unable to perceive any reason for changing the opinions which have already been communicated to Congress.  I find, on the contrary, that there are many objections to the proposed legislation of which I was not at that time aware, and that while several of those which I then assigned have in the interval gained in strength, yet others have been created by the altered character of the measures now submitted.