"Well?" said the other calmly, seeing Le Moyne look at him as though expecting him to show surprise.
"Well!" said Le Moyne. "I declare your Northern phlegm is past my comprehension.—'Well,' indeed! it seems to me as bad as bad can be. Only think of it—only six per cent of intelligence united with this illiterate vote makes a majority!"
"Well?" was the response again, still inquiringly.
"And that majority," continued Le Moyne, "would choose seventy-two per cent of the electoral votes necessary to name a President of the United States!"
"Well," said the other, with grim humor, "they are not very likely to do it at present, anyhow."
"That is true," replied Le Moyne. "But there is still the other danger, and the greater evil. That same forty-five per cent are of course easily made the subjects of fraud or violence, and we face this dilemma: they may either use their power wrongfully, or be wrongfully deprived of the exercise of their ballotorial rights. Either alternative is alike dangerous. If we suppose the illiterate voter to be either misled or intimidated, or prevented from exercising his judgment and his equality of right with others in the control of our government, then we have the voice of this forty-five per cent silenced—whether by intimidation or by fraud matters not. Then a majority of the remaining fifty-four per cent, or, say, twenty-eight per cent of one third of the population of the Nation in a little more than one third of the States, might exercise seventy-two per cent of the electoral power necessary to choose a President, and a like proportion of the legislative power necessary to enact laws. Will the time ever come, my friend, when it will be safe to put in the way of any party such a temptation as is presented by this opportunity to acquire power?"
"No, no, no," said the Northern man, with impatience. "But what can you do? Education will not make men honest, or patriotic, or moral."
"True enough," was the reply. "Nor will the knowledge of toxicology prevent the physician from being a poisoner, or skill in handwriting keep a man from becoming a forger. But the study of toxicology will enable the physician to save life, and the study of handwriting is a valuable means of preventing the results of wrongful acts. So, while education does not make the voter honest, it enables him to protect himself against the frauds of others, and not only increases his power but inspires him to resist violence. So that, in the aggregate, you Northerners are right in the boast which you make that intelligence makes a people stronger and braver and freer."
"So your remedy is—" began the other.
"Not my remedy, but the only remedy, is to educate the people until they shall be wise enough to know what they ought to do, and brave enough and strong enough to do it."