While

The double movement in the qualifications for the electorate was not sectional, there was unusual uniformity: widening to admit all whites, native or foreign, narrowing to exclude the negro. By 1867 the qualifications for suffrage became very greatly altered. Twenty commonwealths required that the voter be a citizen of the United States and eight that he "declare his intent" to become a citizen. Only New Hampshire failed to fix a definite term of residence for electors, but under the stress of immigration and abolitionism the term was growing shorter in the North and longer in the South. A property qualification was not required in twenty-eight commonwealths and in six others it had dwindled to a tax test. No woman had voted since 1807. The negro was denied the privilege of suffrage in all but six commonwealths and discriminated against in one of these; in but two (New Hampshire and Massachusetts) would public opinion permit him to vote. The foreign vote was becoming formidable-especially in the cities. Slavery had kept immigrants out of the South. the XIVth Amendment discouraged the unjust disfranchisement of citizens, the XVth declared that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." But suffrage was still a commonwealth matter: the United States could take cognizance only when one of the above amendments was violated. Yet the negro could and did vote. But he was soon divorced from the unfamiliar privilege. Meanwhile two other suffrage questions claimed attention. In 1869 the territory of Wyoming granted full suffrage to women and at that time the influx of aliens became startling. Thus three problems confront the publicist: the negro, the foreigner, and the woman. During the last quarter of the past century significant changes have been made in the qualifications for electors, mirroring clearly these suffrage questions. The XVth Amendment forced the word "white" out of thirty-seven commonwealth constitutions; but recently ten southern commonwealths have revived the property test, and have exempted the impecunious whites, so that the negro alone is affected. There are no real property qualifications elsewhere. Thirty-one commonwealths require the voter to be a citizen, and

in ten he can vote upon "declaration of intent." The term of residence required of electors has become longer in the South, shorter in the North, and still shorter in the West. In four western commonwealths women vote at all elections, while in twenty-one they enjoy "school suffrage," and in six a sort of "municipal suffrage." Eleven commonwealths require an educational qualification; unfortunately six of these are in the South where the negro alone has to meet the test; ignorant whites are skillfully excepted. Thus the newest as well as the oldest qualification for the elective franchise is made to serve the ends of partisan politics. The age test (twenty-one years) has never been changed.

A glance at the Twelfth Census discloses some startling facts. Out of 75,994,575 of population, 10,341,276 are foreigners and 8,833,994 negroes; out of 21,134,299 possible voters, 2,288,470 are illiterate. Also in the extreme West, with a population of 4,091,349, the males outnumber the females by 504,115. Thus, while the presence of the foreigner and the negro has created suffrage problems in the North and South respectively, the absence of woman has done as much for the West of high altitudes. The three sections are solving their problems: the North is raising the qualification of citizenship, the South is disfranchising the negro by property and educational tests that bear upon him alone, the West has begun to extend full suffrage to women. The hindrances are: the foreigner's habit of colonizing in the large cities, the negro's moral obliquity, and the woman's indifference. The electorate has grown from 150,000 to over 21,000,000. Suffrage from a feeble beginning has come to be the problem of the republic. Everything depends on the bond uniting state and government. In recalling the two and one quarter million illiterate voters it is well to remember that a stream cannot rise above its source. While much can be accomplished through impartial and stringent suffrage and election laws the education of the electorate is the nation's best safeguard.

химедта Albut JM Cullode,

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

THE CONSUMMATE FLOWER OF ESTHETICISM

ÆSTHETICISM is a doctrine of some philosophies, a theory of art now dominant in artistic circles, a practical cult followed intentionally by a cultivated few and unintelligently by a miscellaneous multitude. It is a modern Epicureanism having for its cardinal and comprehensive postulate that pleasure is the supreme good. Its prescription for the improvement of mankind is the cultivation of taste and the development of æsthetic sensibility. It maintains the pagan doctrine that the purifying influence in life (the Aristotelian Kalapoiç) is æsthetic rather than moral, and that the hand of Art is competent to sprinkle humanity with lustral water, making it clean and sweet and beautiful. The two fatal errors that damn this pagan doctrine are its repudiation of morals and its extravagant glorification of the physical senses. Estheticism has gradually assumed such dogmatic definiteness, bold aggressiveness, and shameless indecency as to startle, horrify, and exasperate a not-over-sensitive public, provoking a justly furious storm of indignation. Culminating in such shocking examples as Oscar Wilde and Stanford White, it has exposed its real nature so glaringly as to make the civilized world stand aghast. But the world will lose the lesson of those horrible examples unless it perceives that they are the natural fruit, the logical and legitimate result of the doctrine and practice of æstheticism. Repudiate morals and glorify the senses, and nothing more is needed to insure rottenness and ruin.

For twenty years Oscar Wilde posed as the prince of æsthetes in England, afterward spent two years in prison as punishment for loathsome crimes, and died a dozen years ago in squalor and misery

in the Latin Quarter of Paris, as friendless as he was frivolous, as deserted and destitute as he was degraded, shunned by all mankind excepting Robert Ross, his literary executor, and Lord Alfred Douglas, who paid the expenses of Wilde's burial. Ten years after the forlorn ending of the chief æsthete's career, the patience of the decent portion of mankind has been sorely tried by an effort on the part of certain intrepid champions of æstheticism to restore Oscar Wilde to public tolerance and even to favorable regard. In pursuance of this effort Robert Ross published a small prose volume entitled De Profundis, written by Wilde during his incarceration, and a string of verses entitled The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written after his release. These volumes, it is claimed, contain a confession, an apology, a self-vindication, a reparation. Upon the basis of these two very peculiar documents, left by a fatally perverted nature, one man has written of "Oscar Wilde's Atonement," claiming that by what is therein contained the prisoner of Reading Gaol has fully atoned for the egregious folly and the horrible evil of his life. But in those documents we can discover not even a faint desire to offer any apology for himself and his abominable crimes. Another advocate of æstheticism wrote exultantly of "The Rehabilitation of Oscar Wilde." But the effort for such restoration proves as futile as an attempt to rehabilitate an addled egg. Worst of all among the rehabilitators, considering his position, is Professor Hugh Walker of Saint David's College, Lampeter, England, who published in the Hibbert Journal an article entitled "The Birth of a Soul," the gist of which was that the two documents referred to prove that their unhappy author became, while in prison, a new man by experiencing "a second birth in a sense far deeper than that which is usually attached to the gliblyrepeated phrases of traditional theology." (A professor who pleads the cause of Oscar Wilde is likely to indulge in flings at traditional theology.) Neither in De Profundis nor in The Ballad of Reading Gaol is there adequate proof of any real transformation of character. The core of Professor Walker's article is in this sentence: "The change worked in Wilde while in prison is so enormous that it may fairly be described as the birth of a soul. The new soul was begotten by sin and born of agony." Evidently this professor does not understand the method of spiritual regeneration nor the signs and evidences of a new birth. A new soul is begotten not by sin but by the Holy Spirit convincing of sin, and is born not of mere suffering but of sincere renunciation of sin and repentance unto good works. That

the miserable convict of Reading Gaol ever approached or desired such a state of mind there is no proof. So absurd is Professor Walker's ethically shallow article that we cannot wonder at Andrew Lang's comment when he read the account of the birth of a soul, in which the professor describes the author of Salome as being as "beautiful as a floating bubble played upon by the sunlight, sporting upon the surface of life." "How innocent some of the clergy are! Anything but a beautiful bubble was Dr. Walker's hero," remarks Mr. Lang. And when he reads further the professor's opinion that it may have been worth while for his "beautiful bubble" to sin as deeply as he did, inasmuch as it helped him to write about it as he did, Mr. Lang exclaims: "Here is quite the newest morality. One reads with incredulous laughter; but the stuff is in print in the Hibbert Journal! In the name of the prophet-Bosh!" Not with laughter are we able to read such dangerously superficial and demoralizingly sentimental "stuff." It is necessary to protest against the blurring and muddling of the moralities in literary and artistic and even theological circles. It is a duty to insist on the awful moral lessons which drip from the fate of Oscar Wilde like drops of blood from a sharp chisel's edge. Vastly instructive and impressive is it that these tragic ethical lessons are found bleeding down in a realm the rulers of which undertake to exclude ethics altogether-the world of æsthetics. Out from the career of this apostle of æstheticism sounds what Dr. Olin A. Curtis calls "the moral outcry, the serious warning for sinful men."

Wilde's case affords opportunity to study æstheticism in full bloom, since he was in doctrine its most insistent and in conduct its most consistent apostle in modern times. He had the courage or the impudence of his principles and lived down to them without reserve or hesitation, daringly desecrating his life to the unmitigated practice of his luxurious philosophy. The normal ultimate development of æstheticism is sheer abandoned sensualism. Its full evolution is usually repressed either by a decent regard for the opinions of mankind or by fear of the police. But this leader of asthetes developed shamelessly and fearlessly to the full. Thus he came to be the typical æsthete of his day. We call him the consummate flower of æstheticism, a most noxious, mephitic, and poisonous bloom. He tells us how in his college days he started on the course which made him the chief of æsthetes and finally put him in prison: "I remember when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round Magdalen College's narrow bird-haunted walks one morn