rtant, the
conclusion will be inconclusive and defective.

I contend, in the outset, that any just and charitable answer to this
question must take into account the fact that the Negro is not unlike
the other children of Adam, in that he is possessed of an inherent
immoral tendency. Yet how many, speaking to this subject, reckon from
this point? I think all sane people, at least, are agreed that since
the fall, conformity to the moral standard, as set up by our Creator,
is _relative_ and not _absolute_. I think it would be a very light
task to prove this assertion true, on the best authority known to
man--the Bible. A single instance will suffice to put to silence all
dissenters. David, "the man after God's own heart," gives us a life
whose complexity at once presents the elements of _passion_,
tenderness, generosity, and _fierceness_. From this life flowed a
character blackened by adultery and murder. Rather checkered, measured
by a perfect moral standard.

Grant that the Negro is a child of Adam, and I score one of the most
important points on the side of my negative. Weighed in the balance of
a perfect moral scale, "There is none good, but one, and that is God."

Second: When talking or writing on this subject, men seem to forget
also that this inherent or natural immoral tendency in the Negro has
had the impetus of the most debasing influences of a baser system of
slavery, covering a period of two and a half centuries. This is not a
defense, nor by any means an apology, for the shortcomings of the
Negro, which are too many by far, but it is a plea for fairness in
making up a verdict which is very far-reaching in its consequences.

In my humble opinion this thought is sufficient to temper, at least,
the criticisms of the most rabid and reckless assailants of Negro
morals. Let friends and foes alike think, if they can, what two
hundred and fifty years of training means in a system whose principal
tenet was that a Negro had no wish or will of his own--either morally
or otherwise--a mere thing, acting only as it is acted upon. Under
this system the next most natural thing would be and was the breaking
down and beating back of every bar to the baser passions, except when
its observance, perchance, contributed to the physical vigor and
resistance of the Negro, thus rendering him more valuable and
indispensable to his master. Add to this, if you please, the fact that
there were few, if any, formal marriages; the "shant