In the first place, it was wrong to enfranchise the ex-slaves, not because they were not entitled to votes, but because they were not ready to be intrusted with votes. In 1863 in England as well as in America the world could be saved by the ballot box alone. It was a rebellion against this belief that caused Carlyle to fulminate against “Nigger Democracy.” In talking with Dean Brawley of Morehouse College at Atlanta, I noticed a prejudice against Carlyle which is very widespread among educated colored people. In the first place I should like to assure them that the use by Carlyle of the expression “nigger” has nothing in common with the brutal and contemptuous sense in which that word is used in America. Thus we say “_working like a nigger_,” an expression derived from the life of the slaves; “_nigger diploma_,” a contemptuous English expression for a high degree such as Doctor of Literature or Doctor of Divinity, thought to have been purchased in America at a Negro university; the _ten little nigger boys_, the black boys who come so swiftly to bad ends in the familiar rhyme of our childhood. “Nigger” is in England a playful word for a Negro, and is used always in the nursery. It is the children’s word for a black man, preferably for one who has been thoroughly blacked. Carlyle was one of the most reverent of men, and not accustomed to speak contemptuously of God’s creatures. But he was contemptuous of the suffrage. To him and to Ruskin and to many another it seemed absurd that the voice of the educated man and the illiterate should have the same value; that the many who are dull and ignorant should be allowed to outvote the few who know. The enfranchisement of the freed Negroes furnished Carlyle with an example of carrying an absurdity to its logical conclusion. The alternative to government by ballot has, however, proved to be government by the domination of a military caste, and mankind generally in our time has shown that it prefers the former. The ballot box with all its absurdity seems nevertheless our only means of carrying on in freedom. It would be wrong to grant the suffrage to the millions of savages under British rule in Africa, because they could not use it. And it was wrong to enfranchise Negrodom in America with a stroke of the pen after the Civil War. It has done the Negroes more harm than good. To have such a grievance as to be legally enfranchised and yet physically denied the use of the vote is, of course, great harm. It affects the social mind. It makes bitterness and brews agitation. To be conscripted and called upon to fight for the country when this grievance is in mind has aggravated the harm already done. “We are not too low to fight the foe, but we’re too low to share in the spoil,” as the story goes. I heard a Negro comedian indulging in funniosities at a colored music hall win great applause by a chansonette: