It was a wonderful experience to sit opposite him, to look into his eyes, and to hear him talk.
"It is a great country, yours," he said. "To me the most interesting in the world just at present. What are you going to do with your problems? How are you going to deal with anarchy and the Indian and negro questions? You have a blessed liberty in your country."
"If you will excuse me for saying so, I think we have a very unblessed liberty in our country! Too much liberty is what has brought about the very conditions of anarchy and the race problem which now threaten us."
"Do you think the negroes ought not to have been given the franchise?"
"That is a difficult question," I said. "Let me answer it by giving you another. Is it a good thing to turn loose on a young republic a mass of consolidated ignorance, such as the average negro represented at the close of the war, and put votes into their hands with not one restraining influence to counteract it? You continentals can form no idea of the Southern negro. The case of your serfs is by no means a parallel. But it is too late now. You cannot take the franchise away from them. They must work out their own salvation."
"Would you take it away from them, if you could?" asked Tolstoy.
"Most certainly I would," I answered, "although my opinion is of no value, and I am only wasting your time by expressing it. I would take away the franchise from the negroes and from all foreigners until they had lived in our country twenty-one years, as our American men must do, and I would establish a property and educational qualification for every voter. I would not permit a man to vote upon property issues unless he were a property owner."
"Would you enfranchise the women?" asked the countess.
"I would, but under the same conditions."
"But would your best element of women exercise the privilege?" asked the little countess.