criminals. If it requires some knowledge to be a director in so important a corporation as the state, it also requires some INTEGRITY and VIRTUE. A large portion of those who seek our shores from abroad are not only without education and intelligence, but are so trained as well nigh to empty them of all individual conscience as well as all self-government, and thus disqualify them from their share in the sovereignty of the state.

It may be, too, that the negro, trained in slavery, will prove to have no sufficient moral sense, and that thieving and other petty crimes may be among the vices bequeathed to society with his forced emancipation. All such persons ought to be reached, if possible, and excluded from the suffrage. What right has a man who knowingly sets government at defiance to have any direction or control in its management?

The "New York Herald," in the article from which we have already quoted, goes on to show what has been the cause of the gross misgovernment in the great commercial center. It describes the sovereignty of New York as consisting in part of the following persons:

Now if we add to these fifteen thousand sovereigns those who vend spirituous liquors contrary to law, and carry on trade with contraband goods, and pursue unlawful callings prejudicial to good order, we shall have an army of men large enough to override what of virtue, integrity, and intelligence there may be in this great city. But all of these men are sure to vote; and, as the "Herald" says, "some of them several times." And these men, men who have no care for the wellbeing of the city or the state, and who use their power for the most selfish considerations, are invested by law with the right of suffrage. No wonder that, under such circumstances, "popular government with universal suffrage is a failure." The governing class, the men who make the law makers, and

the law expounders, and the law enforcers, being low in the scale of morals, have brought the government down to something like their own level; and, to quote the "Courier and Enquirer," "universal suffrage is only another name for universal corruption."*

In all intelligent private circles, it is universally conceded that a person grossly ignorant or grossly vicious should not be intrusted with great public interests like those of a city or state. We have also publicly acknowledged this principle to some extent by cutting off from the suffrage idiots, insane persons, penitentiary convicts, and in some states, men who have wagers on the result of the election. In the new Missouri Constitution it has been also acknowledged in that sweeping provision which cuts off from the suffrage all who have adhered or given aid to the late rebellion. But a very much larger portion of these criminal classes should be put outside of the suffrage. There are persons every day convicted in our courts of gross breaches of the public law who turn up as regularly at the polls as the most upright citizen. Deserters from the army, bounty-jumpers, smugglers, defrauders of the revenue, takers of bribes, duelists, gamblers, habitual drunkards, the sellers of spirituous liquors contrary to the statute, the keepers of disorderly houses, and many others, are allowed to do violence to society and law, and then exercise the highest trust of good citizenship. In many of the states even murder is no disability in matters of suffrage or holding office. It would be an easy matter to correct all this. If a conviction for certain crimes were to carry with it disfranchisement, it would weed the ballot of a large part of this base material.

We trust, then, that we have made clear to our readers the three propositions: that political franchise should not be made

* What aggravates the evil in our large cities, especially New York, is that an immense body of property holders occupy suburban residences and have no city vote. The men who own the city are thus disfranchised in its government, while the real power is held by the Irishry, the rumsellers, and the mob. A Popish vote well nigh controls our Protestant metropolis. Is it not time to so modify our municipal franchise at least as to secure the safety of property? Should not every owner of property in the city be a voter in the city at municipal elections? Nay, should not their number of votes be in some degree graduated to their taxation, whether of real or personal estate in the city? Something like this the restoration of order demands, and our security will require.-ED.

dependent upon complexion; that absolute ignorance is, upon ground of public good, a legitimate disqualification; and that disfranchisement should be, upon grounds of both justice and expediency, a uniform penalty for vice and crime.

But so far as the negro is concerned, an immediate work needs to be done in the northern states. Unfortunately many have a much clearer vision as to what should be done for the negro when he is far away in the South than when he is at our own doors. In nearly all the old free states, where we had a right to expect better things, he is treated as a specialty. In some he is allowed to vote if he is more than half white; in others his vote is made to depend on a freehold estate; in others he is wholly excluded from the suffrage; and in nearly all he is hampered by disabling laws which were made in times past in the interest of slavery. And the fact of such negro proscription in the North is quoted by the opposers of negro suffrage as so shameful an inconsistency as ought to. silence all the advocates for that measure, living in the free states; and yet those very opposers know that the advocates of southern negro suffrage are its advocates for the North. It is these opposers themselves who are the authors and supporters of that very proscription upon which they base their argument for a still more sweeping proscription in the South. Nor is the existence of this northern oppression any palliation for southern misdoing, any reason for enjoining silence upon northern advocacy for southern enfranchisement, or any excuse for delay to do right in the southern states. As the negro is now no longer a slave in any part of the United States, and the political reasons for proscriptive legislation are removed, all laws that make franchise dependent upon complexion should be blotted out. They are repugnant to the equity of democratic government, and put us in a false position before the world.*

*The "Chicago Tribune" attributes the following very forcible view of the matter to Gen. Grant: "The government and people may have to choose between keeping a standing army of one hundred thousand men, at an expense of one hundred million dollars a year to the tax-payers, to support the white minority in the South against the white rebel majority, or of enfranchising the blacks, and thereby enabling them to support the white loyalists. Gen. Grant foresees that the suffrage question may take this form. If the loyal whites at the South are unable to sustain themselves and hold the political control of those states, they must either be reinforced by the votes of the loyal blacks, or supported by the bayonets

Another obvious duty is a vigorous application of our educational resources. In the North the ignorant masses which are poured on our shores from the old world will not be educated. We open to them our splendid systems of free schools almost in vain. But in the South the whole negro population are greedy for learning. Wherever schools have been opened they are crowded by both children and adults, and the spelling-book is the companion of the emancipated slave. Let our benevolent citizens act on these facts, remembering that although the true Christian philanthropy of the South will rejoice to cooperate, yet that such is the southern impoverishment that if the negroes have help at all, it must be mainly derived from the organized benevolence of the North.

Finally, whatever makes men wiser or better will always advance the interests of a state under democratic rule. During the war the great work done by the Christian and Sanitary Commissions took the world by surprise and fixed its admiration. There is scope for the same Christian enterprise still. In times past the man who would do good to the slave was scourged out of the South, and dogged by marshals and state attorneys in the North. But all this we hope is now changed, and free scope will be given to both southern and northern benevolence. Educational appliances are not confined to the school-house. We develop men by social influences, the forum, the Sunday-school, the pulpit, a free newspaper press, and many other agencies. These should be quickened in every direction, and the low everywhere should be lifted up. The harvest is great; let not the laborers be few.

We shall not readily surrender the hope that our southern brethren will see the desirableness of abandoning at once the old policy of oppression upon a class or color, whether in the form of slavery or disfranchisement. What is right they cannot but know. What the sentiment of the entire Christian world is they cannot ignore. The restoration of a free press and of free discussion will, we feel most hopeful, work wondrous revolutions in the southern mind. But if the quondam slave states choose persistently the inhumane policy, we trust one or two remedies are possible. Free states are fast being

of northern soldiers. To maintain troops even in time of peace costs not far from one thousand dollars per man."

formed in our western domain, and free principles must rule this nation. Before those free states two questions are likely to rise:

1. What is that republican form of government which the National Constitution guarantees to every state? And we think it will in due time be decided that A STATE CONSTITUTION WHICH DISFRANCHISES FOR MERE COMPLEXION IS NOT

REPUBLICAN EITHER IN SPIRIT OR IN FORM. That change in the National Constitution suggested in one of the late editorials of our Quarterly may then be adopted, by which every native born American, unconvicted of crime and of sound mind, able to read and write, shall be entitled to vote for president and congressmen. Or,

2. The question will fairly come up whether the old slave states are to receive nearly twenty new representatives with the unenlarged constituency. If justice to the colored race induces the South to enfranchise, that increase is right. If not, we trust there will be no hesitation on the part of all the other states in due time to so amend our National Constitution as to proportion the representation to the number of actual voters. Such an amendment is required, not for the sake of a particular class or color, but for the attainment of an equitable ratio of representation among the different states. Yet its ultimate influence will be to induce the South to enfranchise without regard to color. Interest may then induce the bestowment of a right which is refused to honor and justice.

ART. VII.-FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

PROTESTANTISM.

GREAT BRITAIN.

THE COLENSO CASE-RETURN OF COLENSO TO HIS SEE.-Dr. Colenso has recently published the fifth part of his work on the Pentateuch.

In the preface to this volume he announces his intention to return soon to his Episcopal See of Natal, in South Africa. He says:

I now return to the duties which have been so long interrupted of late by circumstances not under my own control. In the midst of those duties I shall find frequent opportunity for acting on the principles which I have here enunciated, and shall rejoice in breathing myself, and helping others to breathe, the free fresh air which the recent decisions have

made it now possible to breathe within

the bounds of the National Church. I shall also, as I hope and fully purpose, find time to pursue these inquiries, and perhaps hereafter return to publish them.