THEN, only white male citizens, twenty-one years of age and over, were voters. NOW, _all_ male citizens of twenty-one years and over, having the necessary qualifications of residence, etc., have the right of suffrage. THEN, voting was _viva voce_. NOW, it is by ballot. THEN, there was no registry of voters. NOW, all electors are required to register before voting. THEN, "returning officers," and those issuing commissions, were bound by the arithmetical results of the polls, and were required to give the commission or certificate of election to the person having the highest number of votes. NOW, there are boards of canvassers who are required not only to count the returns, but to pass upon questions of violence and fraud, and to exclude returns from precincts where they find the elections to have been controlled by such means. THEN, the basis of representation was property, or property and slaves, or slaves by enumerating three-fifths of all. NOW, it is all the _inhabitants_ of the land. THEN, white male citizens, and, in some localities, property holders only, were eligible to office. NOW, _all_ male citizens, save the few under disabilities by the Constitution of the United States, are eligible. Coming down to a later period in the history of the country, from the time when the death of the lamented Lincoln had left the Republic in the hands of its worst enemies, to the presidential election in 1868, and what is the situation? THEN, the leaders had succeeded in ripening the people for a revolution against law and order, if that were necessary for the maintenance of issues, differing in character, but similar in design and spirit, to those sought to be gained by the war of the rebellion. THEN, a reign of terror had been inaugurated in the community which compelled the tacit acquiescence of those who, desiring to express their opinions, were denied the right through the fear of social and political ostracism and physical violence. THEN, the Government was in the hands of Andrew Johnson, and the hopes of good and just men everywhere, in all sections of the country, of arriving at a peaceful solution of the difficulties through reconstruction, were blasted, and gave no signs of verification in fruition. THEN, the same spirit was rampant that plunged the country into a sanguinary war, and did not hesitate to express itself in a determined resistance to the new order of things produced by that war. THEN, men embraced and kissed their wives and children at night, as if leaving them for a far-off journey, not knowing, when they lay down, whether they should awake to peaceful sunlight or to a cabin strewn with the bodies of the loved ones. THEN had begun the first fruits of the great judgments through which the people were eventually to pass, and by which alone, it appeared they could be redeemed.