"The honorable gentleman closed his remarks by desiring the colored people not to consider the Administration inimical to their welfare, if in the adjustment the right of suffrage was not bestowed on all, for it was probable that reading and writing would be the qualification demanded. He paid a high tribute to the colored people of Washington, D. C., for their intelligence, moral worth, and industry, and said that it was probable that the problem of suffrage would be solved in the District of Columbia. After a desultory conversation on phases of national status succeeding the rebellion, both parties seeming well pleased with the meeting, the committee retired."
I did not then, nor do I now, agree with the views of that distinguished statesman. The benignity of the ballot lies in this: It was never devised for the protection of the strong, but as a guardian for the weak. It is not true that a sane man, although unlettered, has not a proper conception of his own interests and what will conserve them—what will protect them and give the best results for his labor. You may fool him some of the time, as you do the most astute, but he will be oftener found among those of whom Lincoln said "You could not fool all the time." William Lloyd Garrison, jr., "a worthy son of a noble sire," pointedly says: "Whoever laments the scope of suffrage and talks of disfranchising men on account of ignorance or poverty has as little comprehension of the meaning of self-government as a blind man has of the colors of the rainbow. I declare my belief that we are suffering not from a too extended ballot, but from one too limited and unrepresentative. We enunciate a principle of government, and then deny its practice. If experience has established anything, it is that the interest of one class is never safe in the hands of another. There is no class so poor or ignorant in a Republic that it does not know its own suffering and needs better than the wealthy and educated classes. By the rule of justice it has the same right precisely to give them legal expression. That expression is bound to come, and it is wisest for it to come through the ballot box than through mobs and violence born of a feeling of misery and despair."
James Russell Lowell has said: "The right to vote makes a safety valve of every voter, and the best way to teach a man to vote is to give him a chance to practice. It is cheaper, too, in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down. The ballot in their hands is less dangerous than a sense of wrong in their heads."
BISHOP ALEXANDER WALTERS.
Born in Kentucky, August, 1858—Educated In the Common Schools of that State—At Thirty-five Elected Bishop of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Taking High Rank as a Theologian, Originator and First President of the National Afro American Council—Thinker, Orator and Leader.
CHAPTER IX.
Among the estimable friendships I made on the Pacific Coast forty years ago was Philip A. Bell, formerly of New York City, one of nature's noblemen, broad in his humanity and intellectually great as a journalist. As editor of The Elevator, a weekly newspaper still published in San Francisco, he made its pages brilliant with scintillations of elegance, wealth of learning, and vigor of advocacy. To his request for a correspondent I responded in a series of letters. I forbear to insert them here, as they describe the material and political status of British Columbia thirty-five years ago—being well aware that ancient history is not the most entertaining. But, as I read them I cannot but note, in the jollity of their introduction, the immature criticism, consciousness of human fallability, broadening of conclusions, mellowed by hope for the future that seemed typical of a life career. Like the horse in "Sheridan's Ride," their beginning "was gay, with Sheridan fifty miles away;" but if they were helpful with a truth-axiom or a moiety of inspiration—as a view of colonial conduct of a nation, with which we were then and are now growing in affinity—the purpose was attained.