now. There never has been a time in our history when so
many honest and just men held power in our land as now,--never a
government before in which the public councils recognized with more
respect the just and the right. There never was an instance of a
powerful government showing more tenderness in the protection of a weak
and defenceless race than ours has shown in the care of the freedmen
hitherto. There never was a case in which the people of a country were
more willing to give money and time and disinterested labor to raise and
educate those who have thus been thrown on their care. Considering that
we have had a great, harassing, and expensive war on our hands, I think
the amount done by Government and individuals for the freedmen
unequalled in the history of nations; and I do not know why it should be
predicted from this past fact, that, in the future, both Government and
people are about to throw them to the lions, as Mr. Theophilus supposes.
Let us wait, at least, and see. So long as Government maintains a
freedmen's bureau, administered by men of such high moral character, we
must think, at all events, that there are strong indications in the
right direction. Just think of the immense advance of public opinion
within four years, and of the grand successive steps of this
advance,--Emancipation in the District of Columbia, the Repeal of the
Fugitive-Slave Law, the General Emancipation Act, the Amendment of the
Constitution. All these do not look as if the black were about to be
ground to powder beneath the heel of the white. If the negroes are
oppressed in the South, they can emigrate; no laws hold them; active,
industrious laborers will soon find openings in any part of the Union."

"No," said Theophilus, "there will be black laws like those of Illinois
and Tennessee, there will be turbulent uprisings of the Irish, excited
by political demagogues, that will bar them out of Northern States.
Besides, as a class, they _will_ be idle and worthless. It will not be
their fault, but it will be the result of their slave education. All
their past observation of their masters has taught them that liberty
means licensed laziness, that work means degradation,--and therefore
they will loathe work, and cherish laziness as the sign of liberty. 'Am
not I free? Have I not as good a right to do nothing as you?' will be
the cry.

"Already the lazy whites, who never lifted a hand in any useful
employment, begin to raise the cry th