Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/42

38 Even in the matter of amending the federal constitution, behold Senator LaFollette's "gateway amendment," by which a minority is empowered to propose amendments. A similar provision was made fifty years before in the constitution of the Confederate States of America; (54) a most decided improvement, in favor of the rights of the minority, over the cumbersome and reactionary provision of the federal constitution requiring a two-thirds majority even to propose amendment for consideration by the amending power.

These, I submit, are no fanciful comparisons, no imaginary parallels. No matter what may be all the details, all the motives, in each case, on the whole we may confidently affirm that through it all runs a larger sense than before of the rights of the weaker; of the beauties and blessings of peace; of the folly, and worse, of war. The Hague tribunal and the Bryan peace treaties are further witnesses to this auspicious change. To come nearer home: an acquaintance of mine, a gentleman from California, remarked casually, in the course of a conversation with me, that among the people of the Pacific coast there was quite a good deal of talk to the effect that they have their own interests and are quite capable of maintaining a separate political existence; although, he added, there is among them, too, a strong attachment to the union. Just how these two things are reconciled, or to be reconciled he did not say. And (another coincidence) much of the differences, if such we may style them, between the Pacific States and the East, like the former controversies between South and North, arise from a race question growing out of the presence in their midst of an alien, dark-skinned race..

So we see the tardily turning tide of national and international ideals and tendencies at last following the once overwhelmed, never really lost, current of Confederate principles. And the South, the ever faithful South, of later times we find revering her leaders of the earlier and darker periods, for "there is life in the old land yet."