33 justice. It is the continuance of slavery. It is, perhaps, the death sentence of four millions of men, delivered over as a prey to contempt, degradation, oppression, and wretchedness, until the time comes to tear them by violence from the soil which has too long been polluted by their presence. The negroes, it is said, think of living and not of voting. This is knowing little of the human heart. Man docs not live bv bread alone, and those negroes who, thanks to the Gospel, are not such savages as we picture to ourselves in Europe, those negroes who equal and often surpass us in many things—those negroes are famishing above all for elevation. They are not anxious before everything to vote ; they are anxious to see the advent of the day when their race will not be excluded from voting throughout the whole South as a race. This is what they desire more ardently than food for the body. And this food for the body, as we have seen, depends more than is imagined on the satisfaction accorded to this generous ambition. Not only respect for their person and their family, but the security of their wages, and their accession to property and to the full enjoyment of civil life—all these are connected with the political emancipation of the race. If the race is politically proscribed, the individualswill be socially degraded and civilly overburdened. I ask those who doubt it to consult the recent deliberations of the Southern states which are attempting to reorganize. They unanimously refuse to confer the right of suffrage upon any fraction whatsoever of the negroes, because this right would imply the equality of the races. Is this clear ? And here is a fact which is not less clear ; they are still deliberating to know whether they shall grant to these colored men (aftei' the abolition of slavery) ! the right of appearing as witnesses in court. Yes, this is the position of the South, and I am by no means astonished at it ; what astonishes me is, that sensible men should dream of opening to them the doors of Congress before the regulation of the negro question, and should wish to charge them 5
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