Question. What phases will the Southern question assume in the next four years?

Answer. The next Congress should promptly unseat every member of Congress in whose district there was not a fair and honest election. That is the first hard work to be done. Let notice, in this way, be given to the whole country, that fraud cannot succeed. No man should be allowed to hold a seat by force or fraud. Just as soon as it is understood that fraud is useless it will be abandoned. In that way the honest voters of the whole country can be protected.

An honest vote settles the Southern question, and Congress has the power to compel an honest vote, or to leave the dishonest districts without representation. I want this policy adopted, not only in the South, but in the North. No man touched or stained with fraud should be allowed to hold his seat. Send such men home, and let them stay there until sent back by honest votes. The Southern question is a Northern question, and the Republican party must settle it for all time. We must have honest elections, or the Republic must fall. Illegal voting must be considered and punished as a crime.

Taking one hundred and seventy thousand as the basis of representation, the South, through her astounding increase of colored population, gains three electoral votes, while the North and East lose three. Garfield was elected by the thirty thousand colored votes cast in New York.

Question. Will the negro continue to be the balance of power, and if so, will it inure to his benefit?

Answer. The more political power the colored man has the better he will be treated, and if he ever holds the balance of power he will be treated as well as the balance of our citizens. My idea is that the colored man should stand on an equality with the white before the law; that he should honestly be protected in all his rights; that he should be allowed to vote, and that his vote should be counted. It is a simple question of honesty. The colored people are doing well; they are industrious; they are trying to get an education, and, on the whole, I think they are behaving fully as well as the whites. They are the most forgiving people in the world, and about the only real Christians in our country. They have suffered enough, and for one I am on their side. I think more of honest black people than of dishonest whites, to say the least of it.

Question. Do you apprehend any trouble from the Southern leaders in this closing session of Congress, in attempts to force pernicious legislation?

Answer. I do not. The Southern leaders know that the doctrine of State Sovereignty is dead. They know that they cannot depend upon the Northern Democrat, and they know that the best interests of the South can only be preserved by admitting that the war settled the questions and ideas fought for and against. They know that this country is a Nation, and that no party can possibly succeed that advocates anything contrary to that. My own opinion is that most of the Southern leaders are heartily ashamed of the course pursued by their Northern friends, and will take the first opportunity to say so.

Question. In what light do you regard the Chinaman?

Answer. I am opposed to compulsory immigration, or cooley or slave immigration. If Chinamen are sent to this country by corporations or companies under contracts that amount to slavery or anything like it or near it, then I am opposed to it. But I am not prepared to say that I would be opposed to voluntary immigration. I see by the papers that a new treaty has been agreed upon that will probably be ratified and be satisfactory to all parties. We ought to treat China with the utmost fairness. If our treaty is wrong, amend it, but do so according to the recognized usage of nations. After what has been said and done in this country I think there is very little danger of any Chinaman voluntarily coming here. By this time China must have an exceedingly exalted opinion of our religion, and of the justice and hospitality born of our most holy faith.

Question. What is your opinion of making ex-Presidents Senators for life?

Answer. I am opposed to it. I am against any man holding office for life. And I see no more reason for making ex-Presidents Senators, than for making ex-Senators Presidents. To me the idea is preposterous. Why should ex-Presidents be taken care of? In this country labor is not disgraceful, and after a man has been President he has still the right to be useful. I am personally acquainted with several men who will agree, in consideration of being elected to the presidency, not to ask for another office during their natural lives. The people of this country should never allow a great man to suffer. The hand, not of charity, but of justice and generosity, should be forever open to those who have performed great public service.

But the ex-Presidents of the future may not all be great and good men, and bad ex-Presidents will not make good Senators. If the nation does anything, let it give a reasonable pension to ex- Presidents. No man feels like giving pension, power, or place to General Grant simply because he was once President, but because he was a great soldier, and led the armies of the nation to victory. Make him a General, and retire him with the highest military title. Let him grandly wear the laurels he so nobly won, and should the sky at any time be darkened with a cloud of foreign war, this country will again hand him the sword. Such a course honors the nation and the man.

Question. Are we not entering upon the era of our greatest prosperity?

Answer. We are just beginning to be prosperous. The Northern Pacific Railroad is to be completed. Forty millions of dollars have just been raised by that company, and new States will soon be born in the great Northwest. The Texas Pacific will be pushed to San Diego, and in a few years we will ride in a Pullman car from Chicago to the City of Mexico. The gold and silver mines are yielding more and more, and within the last ten years more than forty million acres of land have been changed from wilderness to farms. This country is beginning to grow. We have just fairly entered upon what I believe will be the grandest period of national development and prosperity. With the Republican party in power; with good money; with unlimited credit; with the best land in the world; with ninety thousand miles of railway; with mountains of gold and silver; with hundreds of thousands of square miles of coal fields; with iron enough for the whole world; with the best system of common schools; with telegraph wires reaching every city and town, so that no two citizens are an hour apart; with the telephone, that makes everybody in the city live next door, and with the best folks in the world, how can we help prospering until the continent is covered with happy homes?

Question. What do you think of civil service reform?

Answer. I am in favor of it. I want such civil service reform that all the offices will be filled with good and competent Republicans. The majority should rule, and the men who are in favor of the views of the majority should hold the offices. I am utterly opposed to the idea that a party should show its liberality at the expense of its principles. Men holding office can afford to take their chances with the rest of us. If they are Democrats, they should not expect to succeed when their party is defeated. I believe that there are enough good and honest Republicans in this country to fill all the offices, and I am opposed to taking any Democrats until the Republican supply is exhausted.

Men should not join the Republican party to get office. Such men are contemptible to the last degree. Neither should a Republican administration compel a man to leave the party to get a Federal appointment. After a great battle has been fought I do not believe that the victorious general should reward the officers of the conquered army. My doctrine is, rewards for friends.

—The Commercial, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 6, 1880.