(4) Another citizen right is that of suffrage, the right of the ballot; the right to have part in the government; to say who shall make the laws and who shall execute them; and what the laws shall be; the right to have an opinion, and to have that opinion counted in determining what shall be and what shall not be. This is one of the greatest of rights. In a republic citizenship means very little without it. It is this which marks the difference between a representative government, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and a despotism, an absolute monarchy. The glory of the age in which we live is the triumph of democracy; and what is the triumph of democracy but the right of the _people_ to say who shall rule; and how is the will of the people expressed? Through the ballot; at the polls. The ballot therefore is the symbol of the sovereignty of the people. If we are to be sovereign citizens of the Republic therefore, this right to vote must be preserved. The old despotic idea of government was, that some people were born to rule, and that others were born to be ruled; and the idea that exists in the minds of some people in this country, in democratic America, in face of the affirmation of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal, is that in this country, there are some people who are born to rule, and others who are born to be ruled; and that the people who are born to rule are the whites, and those who are born to be ruled are the blacks: hence the effort that is being made to divest us of this symbol of sovereignty,—the ballot. Let us not be deceived; let us give no heed to any teaching, never mind from what source it may come, which seeks to minimize the importance of the ballot. What difference does it make whether we vote or not? I have heard some weak-kneed, time-serving representatives of our own race say; and the thought has been caught up by the men in the south who have been seeking to rob us of our rights, and by those in the North who have been playing into their hands; and they have said, Yes, What difference does it make? Are you not just as well off without it? What difference does it make? It makes all the difference in the world: the difference between a sovereign citizen of the Republic, and one who has been stripped of his sovereignty; between one who has a say in what is going on, and one who has not; between one who is ruled with his consent, and one who is ruled without it. If we are just as well off without the ballot, how is it that the white man is not just as well off without it? And if he is unwilling to give it up, why should he ask us to give it up? Why should we give it up? If he needs it in order to protect himself, much more do we, for we are weaker than he is, and need all the more the power which comes from the ballot.