As to the first. I do not doubt that every day the South remains solid, the drift toward a solid North is deepening. The South is solid now in a sense not dreamed of in ante-bellum days. Then we divided on every question save one, that of preserving equal representation in the Senate. Clay championed the protective tariff. Jackson flew at Calhoun’s throat when Carolina threatened to nullify. Polk, of Tennessee, was made president over Clay, of Kentucky. In 1852, Pierce received the vote of twenty-seven States out of thirty-one, though this period marked the height of slavery disturbance. The South was solid then on one thing alone. On all other questions national suffrage knew no sectional lines. To-day the South is a mass of States merged into one; every issue fused in the ardor of one great question, and our 153 electoral votes hurled as a rifle-ball into the electoral college. The tendency of this must be to solidify the North. Indeed, this is already being done. Seymour and Blair, in 1868, on a platform declaring the amendments null and void, were beaten in the North by Grant, the hero of the war, by less than 100,000 votes. Mr. Harrison, twenty years later, beat Cleveland with a flawless record and a careful platform, over 450,000 votes in the northern States. The solid South invites the solid North. From this status the South has little to hope. The North is already in the majority. More than five million immigrants have poured into her States in the past ten years, and will be declared in the next census. Four new States will give her eight new senators and twelve electoral votes. In the South but one State has kept pace with the West—and that one, Texas, has largely gained at the expense of the Atlantic States. The South had thirty-eight per cent. of the electoral vote in 1880. It is doubtful if she will have over twenty-five per cent. in 1890. To remain solid, therefore, is to incur the danger of being placed in perpetual minority, and practically shut out from participation in the government, into which Georgia and Massachusetts came as equals—that was fashioned in their common wisdom, defended in their common blood, and bought of their common treasure.