On the other hand, there rests upon you the responsibility of maintaining a civilization—­the civilization of America, not of Hayti or of Guatemala which we have so hardly won.  It is neither to be expected nor desired that you should be ruled by an undeveloped race, ignorant of law, letters, history, politics, political economy.  There is no right anywhere in numbers or unintelligence to rule intelligence.  It is a travesty of civilization.  No Northern State that I know of would submit to be ruled by an undeveloped race.  And human nature is exactly in the South what it is in the North.  That is one impregnable fact, to be taken as the basis of all our calculations; the whites of the South will not, cannot, be dominated, as matters now stand, by the colored race.

But, then, there is the suffrage, the universal, unqualified suffrage.  And here is the dilemma.  Suffrage once given, cannot be suppressed or denied, perverted by chicane or bribery without incalculable damage to the whole political body.  Irregular methods once indulged in for one purpose, and towards one class, so sap the moral sense that they come to be used for all purposes.  The danger is ultimately as great to those who suppress or pervert as it is to the suppressed and corrupted.  It is the demoralization of all sound political action and life.  I know whereof I speak.  In the North, bribery in elections and intimidation are fatal to public morality.  The legislature elected by bribery is a bribable body.

I believe that the fathers were right in making government depend upon the consent of the governed.  I believe there has been as yet discovered no other basis of government so safe, so stable as popular suffrage, but the fathers never contemplated a suffrage without intelligence.  It is a contradiction of terms.  A proletariat without any political rights in a republic is no more dangerous than an unintelligent mob which can be used in elections by demagogues.  Universal suffrage is not a universal panacea; it may be the best device attainable, but it is certain of abuse without safeguards.  One of the absolutely necessary safeguards is an educational qualification.  No one ought anywhere to exercise it who cannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one should cast a ballot who had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of intelligence than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and to spell out a line or two in the Constitution.  This much the State for its own protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not a right belonging to universal humanity regardless of intelligence or of character.