eeks of a savage. The convict systems of Alabama, Georgia, South
Carolina and Arkansas are a burning disgrace to the Christian
civilization which we boast. Nothing short of a semi-barbarous public
opinion would permit them to exist. Governors have "called attention"
to them; legislatures have "investigated" and "resolved" that they
should be purified, and a _few_ newspapers here and there have held
them up to the scorn and contempt of the world; yet they not only grow
worse year by year, but the number of them steadily multiplies. And so
they will. How is it to be otherwise? To prevent such ulcerations upon
the body you must purify the blood. You cannot root them out by
probing; that simply aggravates them.

A system of misrepresentation and vilification of the character and
condition of the Southern Negro has grown up, for the avowed purpose
of enlisting the sympathies of the charitable and philanthropic people
of the country to supply funds for his regeneration and education,
which the government, State and Federal, studiously denies; so that it
is almost impossible to form a correct opinion either of his moral,
mental or material condition. Societies have organized and maintain a
work among that people which requires an annual outlay of millions of
dollars and thousands of employees; and to maintain the work, to keep
up the interest of the charitable, it is necessary to picture, as
black as imagination can conceive it, the present and prospective
condition of the people who are, primarily, the beneficiaries. The
work and its maintenance has really become a heavy strain upon the
patience and generosity of the liberal givers of the land--whose
profuse behests have no parallel in the history of any people. They
have kept it up wellnigh a quarter of a century; and it is no
disparagement to their zeal to say the tax upon them is becoming more
of a burden than a pleasure. They have done in the name of humanity
and of God for the unfortunate needy what the government should have
done for its own purification and perpetuity for the co-equal citizen.
And it is high time that the government should relieve the individual
from the unjust and onerous tax.

I do not hesitate to affirm, that while the work done by the
charitable for the black citizen of this Republic has been of the most
incalculable benefit to him, it has also done him injury which it will
take years upon years to eradicate. The misrepresentations resorted
to, t