The charge is, with regard to this universal suffrage, that you take the fruits of increased representation produced by it, and then deny it to a portion of the voters whose action was expected to produce a different political result.  I cannot but regard it as a blunder in statesmanship to give suffrage without an educational qualification, and to deem it possible to put ignorance over intelligence.  You are not, responsible for the situation, but you are none the less in an illogical position before the law.  Now, would you not gain more in a rectification of your position than you would lose in other ways, by making suffrage depend upon an educational qualification?  I do not mean gain party-wise, but in political morals and general prosperity.  Time would certainly be gained by this, and it is possible in this shifting world, in the growth of industries and the flow of populations, that before the question of supremacy was again upon you, foreign and industrial immigration would restore the race balance.

We come now to education.  The colored race being here, I assume that its education, with the probabilities this involves of its elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity.  I speak both of the inherent justice there is in giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition and increasing his happiness that lies in education—­unless our whole theory of modern life is wrong—­and also of the political and social danger there is in a degraded class numerically strong.  Granted integral membership in a body politic, education is a necessity.  I am aware of the danger of half education, of that smattering of knowledge which only breeds conceit, adroitness, and a consciousness of physical power, without due responsibility and moral restraint.  Education makes a race more powerful both for evil and for good.  I see the danger that many apprehend.  And the outlook, with any amount of education, would be hopeless, not only as regards the negro and those in neighborhood relations with him, if education should not bring with it thrift, sense of responsibility as a citizen, and virtue.  What the negro race under the most favorable conditions is capable of remains to be shown; history does not help us much to determine thus far.  It has always been a long pull for any race to rise out of primitive conditions; but I am sure for its own sake, and for the sake of the republic where it dwells, every thoughtful person must desire the most speedy intellectual and moral development possible of the African race.  And I mean as a race.

Some distinguished English writers have suggested, with approval, that the solution of the race problem in this country is fusion, and I have even heard discouraged Southerners accept it as a possibility.  The result of their observation of the amalgamation of races and colors in Egypt, in Syria, and Mexico, must be very different from mine.  When races of different color mingle there is almost invariably loss of physical stamina, and the lower moral qualities of each are developed in the combination.  No race that regards its own future would desire it.  The absorption theory as applied to America is, it seems to me, chimerical.