e
family, "uncles" and "aunts" and "mammies" and playmates. They were
necessary supplements, sharers of all great occasions of joy or
sorrow, of feasts and sufferings. And the tenderest and most watchful
care was bestowed on them. Consideration for the servants was the test
of the "quality." Mutual influences went to make as pure, high and
beautiful a civilization as the system was capable of. And no
philanthropist on earth has ever had a deeper horror for the evils
that have been represented as slavery in the South than many of the
"quality." Nor anywhere was the wise abolition of slavery more
earnestly studied and desired than by the good people of the Southern
states.

In the discussion of the criminality of the Negro, too much importance
is attached to mere statistics. In any discussion of an ethical
character mere statistics may not be relied upon. I shall present a
few which are entirely authentic but which prove little, in my
opinion, prejudicial to the Negroes of to-day as compared with the
Negroes of the past, and could not unless figures could be adduced,
alike authentic, showing the criminality of the Negroes as bondmen;
neither can comparison between the criminality of the blacks and
whites be cited to the Negroes' prejudice in the light of the
disparity between the races in every essential element of race growth.
The foregoing facts greatly detract from any comparative criminal
exhibit in which Negroes of to-day are made to figure.

The last United States census furnishes some figures which seem to be
more in the Negro's favor than against him. Persons of all races in
the penitentiaries of the United States in 1890 were 45,233, of which
number 14,687 were colored. Prisoners in county jails, 19,538, of
which number 5,577 were colored. Inmates in juvenile reformatories,
14,846, of which 1,943 were colored. Of a total of 73,045 almshouse
paupers, only 6,467 were Negroes. Of murderers there were 2,739
Negroes out of a total of 4,425. In 1850 there was one criminal to
3,500 of population; in 1890 one criminal to 645 of population;
whites, one to every 1,000, and blacks, one to every 284. Take the
ignorance of the Negro as to secular matters, the moral torpor in
which he necessarily exists, his poverty, the presumption of guilt
when charged with crime, his inability to defend himself, his being
forced to plead to an information or indictment _in forma pauperis_;
could crime charged and established against him