“If the same rule were applied on the other side and white men were treated likewise, I fear this Convention would have to be adjourned for lack of a quorum.” The “burst of laughter” which followed this threw an interesting light on the morals and manners of South Carolina. It showed the state of civilization depicted in “Tom Jones.” A Convention composed entirely of Squire Westerns would have met such an impeachment in a precisely similar way. Having satisfied their sense of humor the delegates killed the amendment and passed the mixed marriages article. This seizure of a parliamentary advantage in so sudden and effective a manner as to cause the majority leader to abandon his forces and leave them to expose their moral nakedness to the world was more than equal to Mr. Blaine’s rout of the Rebel Brigadiers in the famous Amnesty Debate. For those gentry managed to fan and sponge Ben Hill into the ring again, and these remained “out of time.” And in no one other way could the Negroes have so convincingly proved to the world their right to the ballot than by this victory of black mind over white matter. It is now made plain, as it was made plain by the first laws passed by the unreconstructed Legislature of the same State after the war, that the fear of Negro domination is not born so much of a regard for the numbers as for the developed intellectual ability of the blacks. It is not Negro ignorance, but Negro intelligence, that is feared. * * * * * EDITORIAL FROM THE NEWS AND COURIER, THE LEADING DEMOCRATIC PAPER OF CHARLESTON, S. C., Nov. 23, 1895.