y of this cooeccupancy of territory. The Southern white people
should cultivate kindliest feelings and make wise and strenuous efforts
for the improvement of their former slaves. Already the whites bear the
expense of educating the blacks. In the last six years the expenditure
in Virginia for "colored schools" has amounted to near $1,668,000, and
it would be safe to say that one and a half millions of this sum were
paid by white citizens. So also we take care of their blind, and deaf,
and dumb, and idiotic, pay for the trial and safe-keeping of their
criminals, and bear the burdens of government. Impartial justice should
be administered without reference to race, color, or previous
condition; freedom and the right to hold and inherit property should be
guaranteed; protection against all violence or wrong should be
afforded; but there should be formed no party nor other affiliations
which may tend to efface the line of social separation, or ignore the
predestined distinction of color. The attempt in Africa to Europeanize
the negro and ignore his idiosyncrasies as a race has utterly failed.
The races here should be kept from abnormal admixture. Rigid laws,
springing from and enforced by an inflexible public opinion, should
prevent intermarriage. Miscegenation will degrade the Caucasian. Red
and white deteriorate, _a fortiori_, white and black. The fusion
would lower the white race in the scale of civilization, of moral and
mental power, and would reproduce the ignorance, superstition,
priestcraft, and chronic revolutions of Mexico with her mongrel
population.

A felt want of the South is the restoration of old-fashioned love of
country. A sore need is to feel in our souls, as a passion, that this
is _our_ country; that _we_ have part and lot in it; and to be
deeply interested in its welfare and perpetuity. To keep alive
animosities is unchristian. Brooke found it impossible to frame an
indictment against a whole people. It ought to be equally hard to
involve a whole party, or geographical section, in sweeping accusations
of injustice, and tyranny, and fraud. Strong as is the provocation at
times to bitterness and hatred, the South should not cherish
resentment, but rather seek that which makes for peace and
reconciliation. It is better, as far as possible, to obliterate
unpleasant memories, to practise toleration and forgiveness, to
cultivate a genuine patriotism, ardent love for this ancient birth land
of the free. It i