y" system instead
of home; no responsibility in the training of boys and girls that
naturally came to the so-called homes; no safeguard thrown around the
morals of the tender years of boyhood and girlhood, but, on the other
hand, everything most favorable and conducive to the development of
bad morals. Out of this condition, unless the superior--the
master--had a very high moral sense, which was highly improbable, if
not impossible, under the existing circumstances, little could justly
be expected of the inferior--the Negro. Yet, in spite of all this, the
Negro gave the world a very few rapists of whom we hear so much
nowadays, and on whose account we are so often called upon to defend
him from the viewpoint of our question.

As regards this particular crime, I digress here to say that my faith
is small. For this reason, there was a time when the commission of it
was more opportune and easy than now. For example, during the Civil
War, when it was scarcely, if ever, heard of. I have introduced this
subject here simply to say this, that human nature is one and the same
in mankind, and the argument that natural tendencies do not assert
themselves alike in a slave and a freeman under like favorable
conditions, is open to serious objections, if not in a degree
fallacious. The pertinence of this reference will also appear when
attention is drawn to the fact that the tendency of the rate to
criminality, hence, to moral worthlessness, is more largely
hypothecated upon this than upon any other single crime. By a similar
process of reasoning it would not be difficult to show that all the
races of the world are moral reprobates. For what escape would there
be for any measured by its criminal class? I, therefore, contend,
finally, that the standard by which the Negro is measured is seriously
at fault, if not wholly wrong. Coming out of the most untoward
circumstances, with less than a half century in which to outlive and
unlearn the deadly doings of two hundred and fifty years, who can lay
claim to more or to so much as the Negro? Measure him by the depths
from which he came as well as by the heights which you would have him
attain, when taking his moral pulse.

Third: I note the work of the press, which is largely in the hands of,
and controlled by, those least friendly to the Negro's progress.
Hence, a magnificent contribution is daily made from this quarter, to
his moral impeachment. I think it is never, perhaps, properly
con