WHITES AND BLACKS OR THE QUESTION SETTLED 47

CHAPTER VII. OUR CHRISTIAN DUTY

Concerning the Negro, decide without debate that you brought him here in his parents from Africa, not at his request, certainly without his consent.

Then decide that you taught him all he knows about your civilization as well as your religion and customs. If you find he is making an apt pupil, do not become angry, but be consoled by remembering that you teach, that life is always progress and that man never attains the end; if this be true, and if intellectually you are the peer of the Negro, (and it is said you are superior,) considering the start you had when the Negro began, you will be quite able to keep the same distance ahead. It is not believed that your race will tire of work. Your race is from a zone of industry; mine from a hot belt, where rest is always desirable.

Decide that, in the operation of the laws, everywhere in the South the Negro shall have full justice; that criminals among us shall be punished, while the innocent shall go free; that the sober and industrious shall be righteously compensated, while the intemperate and lazy shall find their bed filled with thorns.

Decide that the Negro race must be judged not by the standard of a people who have been actively engaged as masters of the world for centuries, but by the heights to which they have reached, considering the depths from which they emerged, about twenty-five years ago. Decide that we have men who are bad among us, and very bad, and that the same is true of every race which God has made.