Section 22. "No person who, during the late war between the States, served in the army or navy of the United States, or the Confederate States, or any State of the United States, or of the Confederate States, shall at any time be required to pay a poll tax as a prerequisite to the right to register or vote." Section 23. "The following persons shall be excluded from registering and voting: Idiots, insane persons, and paupers; persons who, prior to the adoption of this Constitution, were disqualified from voting, by conviction of crime, either within or without this State, and whose disabilities shall not have been removed, persons convicted after the adoption of this Constitution, either within or without this State, of treason, or of any felony, bribery, petit larceny, etc." The intention of these acts needs no showing. They have three points in common: (a) Some device enabling all the white voters to evade the force of the disfranchising clauses; (b) The limiting clauses themselves which deprive a majority of the colored voters of their franchise; (c) The reservation of sufficient discretionary power in boards of registrars to enable them to give full effect to the acknowledged purpose of the framers of the constitutions. I know of no lesson they can teach us, except how to do the things we ought not to do. In some cases, by knowing the way down, one may, by reversing the steps taken, regain the lost height. But it is not so here; our fall, like our rise, has been too sudden. We have been thrown from a window, and before we could understand our position, legislated out of a back gate. Only by superior chicane can we repair the second injury, only by superior force repair the first—unless there be justice in the heart of the nation. It behooves us then to study carefully the state of public opinion in the country, which underlies these laws, and gives them whatever stability they possess.