below the status of the people of England half a century ago. In the
higher fields of intelligence, the American negroes,--there are
9,000,000 of them,--supply to-day a large part of their own teachers,
ministers, lawyers and doctors, and in all these professions the
standard is steadily rising.

In regard to morality, generalization is difficult. There is undoubtedly
a much larger criminal element among the blacks than among the whites.
There are proportionately more crimes against property, crimes of
sensuality, crimes of violence. Materials are wanting for exact
comparison, either with the whites, or among the blacks at different
periods. Yet there are few or no sections at the South, even in the
worst parts of the Black Belt, as to which the public gets the
impression of any general lawlessness. And in any comparison of the
present with the time of slavery, we must remember what Carlyle says in
speaking of the cruelties of the French Revolution as compared with
those of the tyranny which preceded it,--when the high-born suffer the
world hears of it, but the woes of the inarticulate are unheard. Wrongs
at the South which shock us to-day,--or wrongs as great--were
commonplace, were unnoted and unchronicled, under slavery. It is
offenses against women that rouse the hottest resentment. But for
centuries the black woman's chastity had absolutely no protection under
the law, and her woes were pitiful beyond telling. For the Southern
negro, true family life was impossible until within fifty years. With so
brief experience in the best school of character, there is no ground for
doubting that he has won a vast moral advance, and the promise of
greater.

Of the negroes, as of every race or community, we may consider the
lowest stratum, the great mass, and the leaders. Regarding not morality
only, but general conditions, there is a considerable element of the
Southern blacks whose condition is most pitiable. Such especially are
many of the peasants of the Black Belt; barely able to support
themselves, often plundered with more or less of legality by landlord
and storekeeper, shut up to heavy, dull, almost hopeless lives.
Inheritance weighs on them as well as environment; when these
plantations were recruited from Virginia, it was only the worst of the
slaves whom their masters would sell, and the bad elements propagated
their like. The case of these people to-day presents one of the open
sores, the unanswered questions,--we