fect is the basis of this judgment. We have also to remember that this offense when committed by a negro is through the action of the mob widely published, while if the offender be a white man it is unlikely to be so well known. I therefore hold to the belief that violence to women is not proved to be a crime peculiarly common among the blacks. I am inclined to believe that, on the whole, there is less danger to be apprehended from them in this regard than from an equal body of whites of the like social grade. This matter is one of exceeding importance, for on it may depend the future of the South. It is fit that in considering it men should keep their heads clear.
In reviewing the condition of the Eu-Africans a third of a century after the war that gave them their new estate, we have, I think, reason to be satisfied with the results of the change. The change has brought us no distinct economic evils, as shown by the statistics of the industries. The labor of the blacks is quite as productive as it was while they were slaves. Their moral situation is not evidently worse than it was before they attained the measure of liberty which they now possess. The first step, that which naturally caused the most fear, has been taken, the people are free and have not turned their liberty to license. In looking forward, however, we see that only a part of the task has been done. The negroes have failed to acquire, save in very small proportion, the capacity for a true political life. It has been found necessary to deprive them of the control they once exercised, to the peril of the States and their own great harm. The question is as to the ways in which they are to be lifted into the safe plane of American citizenship. They must be so lifted, or we shall in time see established in the South a system of serfdom under the control of an oligarchy—a state of affairs in some regards worse than that of slavery, for it will lack the element of personal interest which did much to help the black in the first stages of his life with us.
