race-prejudice; that the patient endurance of those tax-payers, who are attached to the principles of the Constitution, cannot be sufficiently commended, and must be immediately expiated by the adoption of amendments to the several Constitutions of the States, or a further amendment to the Federal Constitution and to the Judiciary Act practically unseating the present color-line judges.' This legislation may be enacted upon some pretext, such as increase of business, or some technical justification. Some future convention I foresee pledging itself to fill the State courts with judges known to be free from race-prejudices, and to elevate some of the colored race to the bench, and resolving 'that the majority of the present court is called upon by the party to exert their wisdom to the best of their prejudices , and to enforce the civil rights of our American citizens of African descent;' and that a 'committee be appointed to frame State laws for the punishment of any future repudiator of these Constitutional Amendments, notwithstanding any quackery, cloudy subterfuge, jugglery, legal pretext, or flimsy refinements of law whatsoever, that may be pleaded in mitigation or justification of such high crime and misdemeanor.'"
The student laughed heartily at this ingenious farrago of sense and nonsense; confessing, however, that it bore a very striking resemblance to the resolutions of representative statesmen.
"But may I not venture to inquire," he responded, "whether you cannot draw another picture equally diverting in the case of other political assemblies? Is your gift of prophecy unique, and exclusively confined to the workings of one great party?"
"By no means," was the reply; "without pausing to consider from what direction the bird takes flight, we shoot folly as it flies. A moment since, a fanciful conception of the great party of civil liberty and civil rights flitted across my brain. I can see in the act of rising, decorated with a strand of white lilies, a politician of the Mugwump faith, with a narrow, angular, highly arched forehead. He approaches the speaker's stand, with a Pecksniffian curl upon his bloodless lips; and in a small, shrill voice, he declares that, as for civil rights, he begs permission to say, that upon this, as upon those other grave national issues, the tariff, trust, and monopoly questions, he proposes to follow
