e and refinement of the most approved
standard.

Indeed, the constant evolution of negro character is one of the most
marked and encouraging social phenomena of the times; it constantly
tends upwards, in moral, mental development and material betterment.
Those who contend that the negro is standing still, or "_relapsing
into barbarism_," are the falsest of false prophets. They resolutely
shut their eyes to facts all around them, and devote columns upon
columns of newspaper, magazine and book argument--imaginary
pictures--to the immorality, mental sterility and innate improvidence
of this people; and they do this for various reasons, none of them
honorable, many of them really disreputable. In dealing with this
negro problem they always start off upon a false premise; their
conclusions must, necessarily, be false. In the first place,
disregarding the fact that the negroes of the South are nothing more
nor less than the laboring class of the people, the same in many
particulars as the English and Irish peasantry, they proceed to regard
them as intruders in the community--as a people who continually take
from but add nothing to the wealth of the community.

It is nothing unusual to see newspaper articles stating in the most
positive terms that the schools maintained by the State for the
education of the blacks are supported out of the taxes paid by _white
men_; and, very recently, it was spoken of as a most laudable act of
justice and generosity that the State of Georgia paid out annually for
the maintenance of colored schools more money than _the aggregate
taxes paid into the treasury_ of the State by the Negro property
owners of the State; while the grand commonwealth of Kentucky only
appropriates for the maintenance of colored schools such moneys as are
paid into the State treasury by the colored people. Can the philosophy
of taxation be reduced to a more hurtful, a more demoralizing
absurdity!

Suppose the same standard of distribution of school funds should be
applied to the city or the State of New York; what would be the
logical result? Should we appropriate annually from nine to twelve
millions of dollars to improve the morals of the people by informing
their intelligence? Would the State be able, after ten years of such
an experiment, to pay the myriads of officials which would be required
to preserve the public peace, to protect life and insure proper
respect for the so-called rights of property? Such an expe