disregarded that will again emerge. Beside, it is explan. atory of dark passages in history and individual career. We must thank Schopenhauer and his followers for thinking out to the bitter end the melancholy mood, for showing so clearly the inexorable logic of worship of force in nature, lust in man, misery and selfish fear and deathThe alternative is thus thrown into clear relief: worship of a God who knows and may be known, self-control, happiness, peace and life. It would be supposed that no reasonable person could hesitate in his choice.

The practical remedies for the morbid habit are faith, tenacity of the ideal, wider knowledge, health, action for others. There has been much dilettante pessimism, much sentimental loitering under the upas, that has had its share in bringing the whole system into discredit; an earnest recognition of its partial truth is yet by no means to be deprecated. It is a phase of thought and feeling through which strong characters must pass and from which they emerge more truly human. It is a philosophy of experience, of age, and may serve to guide effort to better purpose, to more practicable ends. Hence it is not to be wondered at or much lamented that it has already made its way, with advancing culture, into America. It may prove the very corrective we need for the shallow optimism born of brute health, the self-sufficient ignorance and conceit, the nervous haste, flippancy and silly facetiousness that are the bane of the American character and must be outgrown if we are ever to attain dignity and stability as a nation.

The best residuum of pessimism in personal character is recognition of one's limitations and compassion for those of others. It teaches patience, resignation, and deepens the sense of mutual dependence. Thus its lesson, well learnt, is genuinely and sweetly human. In a word it teaches irony, which may be defined as clear perception of the dissonance between the real and ideal,- which never degenerates into despair because it keeps its hold on the ideal while recognizing the age-long process necessary for its realiza

tion, which regards with smiling tolerance rather than with fretful indignation or disgust the error, extravagance and obtuseness of the world, the moth-like life of men. Out of the Styx of pessimism a hardy soul emerges clad in such impenetrable mail.

GREENOUGH WHITE.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA CONSTITUTIONAL

CONVENTION OF 1895.

South Carolina has just drafted her seventh constitution, having run the course from Locke's marvellous freak of constitutional feudalism in 1669, with its eight lords proprietors, margraves, caciques and leetman bound to the soil "under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal," whose children should "be leetman, and so to all generations," through constitutions formed merely by legislative acts, by convention under property qualification and slavery, by a prostrate State under military occupancy at the call of an appointed provisional governor, and again at the call of a Federal major-general, to the instrument framed a few months ago by the Convention which is the subject of this paper. It is notable that no constitution (including the revision of the constitution of 1790 in 1861, which I do not count as a separate constitution), excepting the "Radical Rag" of 1868, has ever been submitted to the people for ratification.1

There were two subjects that occupied the Convention of 1895 either of which should give national interest to its proceedings. The first of these was the suffrage question; the second was the State control of the liquor traffic. But before entering upon any detailed consideration of these points, it will be well to get an understanding of the nature of the Convention, its causes, its characteristics, its objects, how it came into being, and what is its position in the history of the State.

Since 1868 the people of South Carolina had been living under a constitution formed in that year by the Republicans and modelled after the constitution of New York. This constitution, known as "the Radical Rag," proved a very satisfactory instrument of government, having required amendSee Ben. Perley Poore's Charters and Constitutions.

ment in only a few particulars. But for the Tillman movement in 1890 and that ever present factor in Southern life the negro, South Carolina would for years have required no new organic law. Intelligently to comprehend the late Convention we must begin with 1876, when the united white people overthrew the negro and carpetbag government that had for eight years misgoverned, robbed, and disgraced the State. From this year dates the present political epoch in South Carolina, namely, the epoch of white unity in the face of a two-thirds negro majority in population. An important era in South Carolina politics, though not of a kind or importance to be called an epoch, was instituted in 1890 by the consummation of what had until then been known as the "Farmers' Movement," but which has since under the leadership of B. R. Tillman borne that other name so much better suited to political purposes, "Reform." The gist of "Reform," was the cry that the government had been monopolized by a class called by demagogues and ignorant outsiders "the Bourbons," (a rather chimerical species, in a way inharmonious with democratic ideas) and that the common people should now take the administration into their own hands. The cry was to abrogate government by rings and conventions and assert government by the people through primaries and so forth. Just how much ground there was for these charges of oligarchy does not concern us here. When in March, 1890, in a convention called to "suggest" candidates for the coming Democratic Convention and send them out to stump the State, Mr. Tillman declared that he was "the only man in South Carolina who had the brain and nerve to lead the farmers to victory," there was instituted the era whose latest manifestation is the Constitutional Convention of 1895 and to whose logical completeness there is but one step lacking, the formal organization of two political parties with regard to national politics.1 Indeed the political evolution of South Carolina, from the

1

1 Since the writing of the above, active steps in this direction have been taken.

days when darkness sat upon her as upon a throne to the present moment, is as interesting, as clearly distinguishable, and as philosophically harmonious, as can be found in the history of any State, and, as was remarked above, only one step more (which seems to be a logical necessity) is lacking to complete the present epoch and make way for one for which politics, education, commerce and manufactures have been accumulating the conditions.

The fear of negro domination having grown less with time, the arraying of the farmers against other classes became a possibility, under constant protestations that any division among the white people was deprecated. The Reformers obtained complete control of the Democratic machinery at a blow in 1890, and in four years and less were treating their political opponents in the Democracy exactly like a different party, as the Conservatives were in turn treating them. The Conservatives have an idea that they are the only people in South Carolina who are in any wise. fit to rule, and the supremacy of the Tillmanites is a thorn in the flesh to them. They have an idea that some enemy has possessed himself of the house and that every consideration of patriotism demands that he be ousted. To them the Tillmanite is not a fellow citizen, a victorious political opponent: he is a usurper. Mutatis mutandis, the sentiments of the Tillmanites towards the Conservatives, are the same. So we see that this was a very bitter fight that was being waged in this old State of bitter fights.

Things had come to such a pass in 1892 that some of the Conservatives hinted that it might be a service to the State to get the negroes to vote with them and so defeat the Tillmanites. This was only a hint, but in 1894 many thought seriously of it, though no such attempt was made or even contemplated on the part of the Conservatives as a body. But all thinking men saw that the pressure was too high; it could not be much longer sustained. If things went on in that way an appeal to the negro was as sure as sunrise. Therefore it was necessary to take time by the forelock, and dis