Show THE congressional ELECTION BILL FEW measures ever introduced have excited a feeling so strained aul intense as that which has been awakened bythe by he fhe f bill providing ro viding for federal control of congressional elections the bill is so framed as to give federal appointees a supervisory control of elections for members of congress the certificate of the board constituted under the proposed law to be taken as fade fack evidence of title to a seat in the national legislature it is a republican measure being in line with the platform declaration of the party in 1887 in relation to the pro lection of the right of the colored people to the exercise of the fran chise in the south As a matter of course should the measure become law the democratic solidity of that section of the country would be broken and the prestige of the party practically annihilated the question with which this proposed law is associated is a serious one it is pertinent to ask whether it would improve thet the situation or make it tenfold worse than it is even granting that the law giving the suffrage to the colored people is now rendered nugatory by trickery intimidation andl will it precipitate the race war which statesmen babu been for years predicting as merely a matter of time even same republicans from the south take the gloomy view regarding the probable effects of the measure should it become law mr coleman member of colgrass Cor CoL gress from louisiana and a republican is among the number as indicated by his remarks in the house june during the debate he said he did not wish to precipitate any trouble and he was as certain that trouble and bloodshed would follow the enactment of this legislation and that the law would fail in its purpose as he was sure that he would vote against it in the house he wanted to ee the solidity af pf of the south broken and there were signs of disintegration in the democratic party of the south pass a federal election law and the men now no w ready to separate from the democratic party would go back into what they were told was the white arans party rather than risk negro supremacy in numbers of sections of the south tae colored population aarein are in the majority it seems therefore that an alternative is involved of a very serious cliar character acter shall the legal rights of the colored electors be denied and a bloody conflict of the two races be postponed or shall this proposed measure be passed and enforced and the horrible struggle be precipitated the white race is the superior and for it to be dominated by the inferior is an unnatural position and therefore its peaceable existence is a philosophic impossibility the voice of natural law jaw would inevitably seek to assert itself and rectify the situation hence the dilemma the question involves and yet the law asserts that the black man shall be protected in the exercise of the suffrage it confers thus human enactments have I 1 in u their operations come to a point where they are confronted by a natural and necessarily insurmountable obstacle when mr coleman asserts that the white men will not submit to the rule of their colored brethren he is not only supported by the determination of the caucasian population of the south but by a natural law that Is absolute and unyielding |