THE NEGRO QUESTION. 185 



under the passions of the terrible conflict then raging, the Congress, 

 instead of heeding the request, repealed the former act appropriating 

 five hundred thousand dollars. 



The Indians, against their will, were transported, by coercive meas- 

 ures, to allotted lands beyond the Mississippi, but that was before 

 the modern discovery that the United States should grant " frater- 

 nity and assistance to all people " under other than republican gov- 

 ernments, and that universal suffrage was the infallible expedient 

 for civilizing semibarbarous peoples. President Harrison, in his 

 letter of acceptance, writing on another subject, says, " AVe are 

 already under a duty to defend our civilization by excluding alien 

 races whose ultimate assimilation with our people is neither possible 

 nor desirable." 



Remedies, strong and adequate and feasible, may not be found 

 readily, but there are gentler and quieter agencies which may be 

 used by both races to mutual advantage. The white people, in accept- 

 ing the legitimate consequences of defeat, in vigorous efforts to re- 

 store antebellum prosperity, in establishing schools, in reconstruct- 

 ing shattered society, have done nobly, but they are not without sin. 

 Laws, general and wise and impartial, on the statute-book need for 

 their enforcement a sustaining public opinion, but this has not always 

 been forthcoming. Lawless and violent proceedings, always un- 

 necessary and demoralizing, sometimes as brutal as the crimes which 

 excited horror; harsh and unjust contracts; interferences in elec- 

 tions; false registration and counting of votes, and other acts which 

 the plea of self-preservation did not justify, have evinced the harsh- 

 ness and injustice of dominant power, and have not tended to soften 

 prejudices or make the situation more tolerable. Each race is for- 

 tunately improving in intercourse and in dealings with the other, 

 and time and sober judgment are, in a sensible degree, removing 

 causes of alienation which are not inherent and incurable. 



" What a blessing," said President Sir John Lubbock, at the late meet- 

 ing of the International Congress of Zoologists, " it would be for mankind 

 if we could stop the enormous expenditure on engines for the destruction 

 of life and property, and spend the tenth, the hundredth, even the thou- 

 sandth part on scientific progress ! Few people seem to realize how much 

 science has done for man, and still fewer how much more it would still 

 do if permitted. More students would doubtless have devoted themselves 

 to science if it were not so systematically neglected in our schools ; if men 

 and boys were not given the impression that the field of discovery is well- 

 nigh exhausted. We, gentlemen, know how far that is from being the 

 case. Much of the land surface of the globe is still unexplored ; the ocean 

 is almost unknown ; our collections contain thousands of species waiting to 

 be described; the life-histories of many of our commonest species remain 

 to be investigated, or have only recently been discovered." 



