Amendment XX to the Massachusetts Constitution is as follows: "No person shall have the right to vote, or be eligible to office under the constitution of this commonwealth, who shall not be able to read the constitution in the English language, and write his name. _Provided however_, that the provisions of this amendment shall not apply to any person prevented by physical disability from complying with its requisition, _Nor to any person, who now has the right to vote_, nor to any person who shall be sixty years of age or upwards at the time this amendment shall take effect." Thus Massachusetts requires that those wishing to exercise the elective franchise in the future must be able merely to read the English language; and expends annually more than four dollars per capita to educate them; while Mississippi requires, not only future electors, but those who have previously exercised the right to vote to give "_a reasonable interpretation_" to the satisfaction of a registration officer, and expends annually less than one dollar per capita for education! Here it may be well to state that, although the idea of a qualified suffrage grew out of the desire and the necessity to prepare the foreign born element of our population, aliens to our institutions and language, for an intelligent exercise of the ballot, the Negro does not make objection or complaint to a just and fair educational test of his fitness to exercise the right of suffrage. Absolutely loyal to republical institutions, he is willing to go as far as any in the matter of fairly and justly protecting the ballot from abuses that grow out of ignorance. The Constitution of Mississippi has served as the pattern for the disfranchising enactments of South Carolina and Louisiana. The main provision in the South Carolina Constitution regulating suffrage is as follows: "Up to January 1, 1898, all male persons of voting age applying for registration, who can read any section of this constitution submitted to them, _or understand and explain it_ when read to them by the registration officer, shall be entitled to registration and become electors." It will be observed that the understanding and interpreting clause of the foregoing operates the reverse of that of the Constitution of Mississippi. The South Carolina provision was limited to cease after January 1, 1898, while that of Mississippi was limited to begin January 1, 1892 and to continue thereafter without ceasing. Subdivision (d) of the above mentioned section of the South Carolina Constitution provides as follows: