Mr. DONNELLY. T It will gratify me and the country too. But, to proceed with the remarks I was making when interrupted. lt, sir, this enormous powth of ignorance is to continue we can meet with no fate save that which has overtaken too many of the free Governments of the world. We cannot count upon our representative system. The struggle we have gone through shows too plainly that. reforms must originate with the people. The people may be converted, the Representatives never. They are precisely what the people behind them are, an no more. If the people are ignorant, they will have dema gogues for their representatives. The preservation of this Government 4: the many dangers that have encompassed it since its birth I look upon as the marvel of modern times. The hand of God is plainly visible in it. Let us do our part now to prepare the way for the might future that awaits us. There is no loftier taslzon earth. We cannot leave the population of the South, white or black, in the condition they are now in. We must educate them. When you destroy ignorance you destroy disloyalty; for what man with a free, broad scopeof mind, and with a knowledge of all the facts, can fail to love this just, benevolent, and most gentle Government? Let us turn, then, to the next consideration. What chance is there for the black man in the South without the intervention of this bureau 7 We have liberated 4 million slaves in the South. It is proposed by some that we stop right here and do nothing more. such a course would be a cruel mockery. These men are without education, and morall and intellectuallydegraded by centuries of bondage. The have neither the arts nor the knowl e ge nor t. e power of combination to protect. themselves against the superior race from whose rasp they have just been forcibly wrested. That race did not willingly yield them up; to abandon them to their former masters would be to consign them once more to inevitable slavery. The master would have every inducement to reiinslave his former bondsman, and note single barrier would stand in his way. But it may be said the amendment to the constitution prohibiting slaver would protect them. Sir, a grand abstract eclaration, unenforced by the arm of authority, is not a protection. But gentlemen seem to forget that slavery is not confined to any precise condition. Every country tolerating slavery has ailixed to it conditions peculiar to itself. The old Roman slavery was in many essentials diflecrent from the southern institution; and modern slavery has presented many different phases. Slavery consists in a deprivation of natural rights. A man may be a slave for a term of years as fully as though he were held for life; he may be a slave when deprived of a portion of the wages of his labor as fully as if deprived of all; he may be held down by unjust laws to a degraded and defenseless condition as fully as though his wrists were manacled; he may be Oppressed by a convocation of masters called a legislature as fully as by a single master. In short, he who is not entirely free is necessarily a slave. what has the South done for the black man since the close of the rebellion? Let us examine the black codes of the different States adopted since that time. In SCarolina it is provided that all male negroes between 2 and 20, and all females between 2 and 18, shall be bound out to some “master.” The adult negro is compelled to enter into contract with a master, and the district judge, not the laborer, is to fix the value of the labor. If he thinks the compensation too small and will not work, he is a vagrant, and can be hired out for a term of service at a rate again to be fixed by the judge. If a hired negro leaves his employer he forfeits his wages for the whole year. The black code of Mississippi provides that no negro shall own or hire lands in the State; that he shall not sue not testify in court against a white man; that he must be employed by a master before the 2nd Monday in anuary or he will be bound outin other words, sold into slavery; that if he runs away the master may recover him and deduct the expenses out of iis whs; and that if another man employs him he Wlll be liable to an action for damages. It is true the President has directed General Thomas to disregard this code; but the moment the military force is withdrawn from the State that order will be of no effect. The black code of Alabama provides that if a negro who has contracted to labor fails to do so he shall be punished with damages; and if he runs away he shall be punished as a vagrant, which probably means that he shall be sold to the highest bidder for a term of years; and that any person who entices him to leave his master, as by the offer of better wages, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be sent to jail or 6 months: and further, that these regulations include all persons of negro blood to the 3rd generation, though one parent in each generation shall be pure white; that is, down to the man who has but one 8th negro blood in his veins. The Mississippi Legislature passed a law prohibiting negroes from acquiring lands or real estate. This was promptly overruled by the U.S. authorities. Whereupon the Legislatures of Mississippi and Alabama passed laws making the owner of the property, who rents or leases a negro a house or land, responsible for everything he buys his meat, his bread, his doctors bill, and even his taxes. Of course no one will rent a black man a house or lease him land under such a law; and of course also the negro will have to be driven out n on the highway and become a vagrant, and t us become subject to the vagrant law. The black code of Tennessee provides that the vagrant negro may be sold to the highest bidder to pay his jail fees; and to make sure that he be he t a vs. at no housekeeper shall harbor him; is chi dren may be bound out infgainsthis wish ton master byt e county court; his master fails to pay him he cannot sue him nor testify against him. It further provides that colored children shall not be admitted into the some schools with white children, while it makes no provision for their education in separate schools. The black code of Virginia provides that any man who will not work for “the common wages given to other laborers” shall be deemed avagrant; the masters have formed combinations and hav. but down the rate of wages to the freedmen ielow a living price; the ne prorefusing to work for these wages is seize as a vagrant, sold to service “for the best wage as that can be procured” for 3 months; if e runs off he shall work another month with ball and chain for nothing. It is true General Terry has declared that the Order shall not be enforced; but of what avail will this be when the military are withdrawn and Virginia is reconstructed? All this means simply the re establishment of slavery: 1. ile shall work at a rate of wages to be fixed by a county judge or a Legislature made 11. Of white masters, or by combinations of white masters, and not in any case by himself. 2. He shall not leave that master to enter service with another. If he does he is pursued as a fugitive, charged with the expenses of his recapture, and made to labor for an additional period, while the white man who induced him to leave is sent to jail. 8. His children are taken from him and sold into virtual slavery. 4. If he refuses to work he is sold to the highest bidder for a term of months or years, ” and becomes in fact a slave. 5. He cannot better his condition; there is. no future for him; he shall not own property; he shall not snperintend the educatron of his children; neither will the State educate them. 6. If he is wronged he has no remedy, for the courts are closed against him. Said it Georgian the other day: “Thu blacks eat, sleep more, live, only by the tolerance of the whites, who hate them. The blocks own absolutely nothing fibnut their bodies; their former own every mend will sell th noth inz. Tf ablack man draw: even a bucketad?water from swell, he must 1st set the permission of a white man. his enemy. [t he sleeps in a house over night. loaf oonfly) rbeyadth, ehelemavuestofbuay white man. If he buys a a white man. It he asks for work to earn his living, he must ask it of n hWimllllnflom work, aenxdetehpet own his tuecshatreermdestaesrimviilnl emdatkoe iivme a sort“and impair his liberty.” This, then, is slavery, less the protection which the master formerly afforded his chattel. The slave now has a mob for his master. General Schurz says, in his admirable report: “The emancipation of the slaves is only submitted to in sofar as chattel slave in the old form could not he kept, up. But althong the freedman is longer no ter, he considered the property of the individual mus is considered t slave of society: and all in dependentState legislation will show the tendency to make him such. The ordinances abolishing slavery. passedby the conventions under the pressure f circumstances, Will not be looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of servitude.” The enemies of the black man, those who opposed his liberation, now point to him and say, “See the condition to which you have reduced him. He is worse off than before. His race is erishing from the face of the earth under the innumerable miseries which liberty has inflicted upon it.” For one, with the help of Almighty God, I shall never consent to such cruel injustice. Having voted to give the negro liberty, I shall vote to give him all things essential to liberty. If degradation and oppression have, as it is alleged unfitted him for freedom, surely continued degradation and oppression will not prepare him for it. If he is notto remains. brute you must give him that which will make him a man opportunity. If he is, as it is claimed, an inferior being and unable to compete with the white man on terms ofequality, surely you will not add to the injustice o nature by castin him beneath the feet of the white man. Wit what face can you reproach him with his deg radation at the very moment you are striving to still further degrade him? If he is, as you say, not fit to vote, give him a chance; let him make himself an independent laborer like yourself; let him own his homestead; letthe courts of justice be opened to him; and let his intellect, darkened by centuries of neglect, be illuminated by all the glorious lights of education. If after all this he proves himself an unworthy savage and brutal wretch, condemn him, but not till then. He must have this opportunity. He cannot remain in an amphibious condition between liberty and slavery. He must be either full slave or full free man; he must either be master of himself or the servant of another. Do not believe the delusive hope uttered by some that the race which has all the privileges will some day willingly divide them with the race that has none. he worlds history tells no such story. The Old Worlds royalties and aristocracics rest upon ancient conquests; and yet how unwilling, even after centuries have passed, have the victors ever been to permit the vanquished to rise l Let the wretched condition ol the masses in those countries at the present day testify. Is the right of suffrage necessary to thenegro? he right to vote is the right of selfprotection, through the possession of a share in the Government. Without this a mans rights lie at the mercy of other men who have eve self ish incentive to rob and oppress him. his is the great central idea of a republican Government. The absence of this is the source of all despotism. I would ask what white man would consider himself safe Without the right to vote, especially if the Government was exercised exclusively by a hostile race? What shield and safeguard can the negro have if it be not the right to vote? To whom can he peal when the highest earthly tribunals are ti led by his enemies? No man can rest with safety upon the mercy and generosity of any other man. The law protects the ward from its guardian, the child from its parent, the wife from her husband, nay, even the dumb brute from its owner. Can we then, as the Representatives of a free people, consign a helpless race to the mercy of its hereditary oppressors? Can we, in the heart of a free Government, permit the erection of such a strange and abnormal system of despotism? [Here the Speakers hammer fell.]