The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-09-19
THAT HIGHER LAW.

Christian Register that mo two races have ever lived In the same country on terms of equality and mutual respect un- less they were capable of intermarriage. The New Bedford Standard applies it to conditions as they exist in the Southern States, and argues, or rather intimates that the time will come when by the intervention of a higher law equality and mutual respect will come without the necessity of intermarriage.'
 We must confess that this reference to a higher law" Is not very palatable to Southern people. It was upon this "higher law" which was claimed to te above the Constitution and the laws of the United States, that the old abolition ists based their right to interfere with and abolish slavery It was to ths belief In a higher law that we owe the war with all its train of evils, and :hat same dogma is responsible for much of the trouble that has existed in the United States for the last half century. It was William H. Seward who declared, just There is a higher law than the Consti- tution," and the expression became d watch-word and rallying cry for the
 
 bloodshed was the inevitable result. We confess that we have no love for the term when applied to racial or political affairs.
 It will be observed that '4e Standard does not advocate the intermarriaxe of the white and colored races In fact. it distinctly admits that "there Is undoubt- edly a natural law of human nature which forbids intermarrage, and with this admission we are at a loss to See what ground 1t has to stand on .n it's evident belief that there will come a time when the operation of that higher law of which it speaks will repeal the disinclination which the negroes and whites have to marry each other, lr other words, while it admits the natural law against intermarriages. it seems tC think there will come time when the whites will be so highly instructed that they will no longer be governed by that natural law. but will forget or disregard 1t, and there will be no objection to race equality and no prejudice or feeling to prevent an equal mingling of the two races. Intermarriage and miscegenatior would follow as a natural consequence and the time would come when there would no longer be a white or colOrec race in the South. but we would he z nation of mongrels. mulattoes and mixed breeds of all colors, but white.
 We are never much surprised at any position taken by some of our New Eng land contemporaries when they come tc speak of Southern affairs. yet we hav' little patience with such reasoning al The Standard indulges in. It is so ia from being true that we can see no eX cuse for making 1t, for if there has beer any change among the white people O the South since the Civil War they ar more averse to race equality and rae mingling now than they were when tn war closed Neither time nor contac nor the teaching of meddling outsider has removed from the whites any 0 their antipathy to miscegenation. ant | we fail to see any evidence of tha higher law to which The Standard look as means of breaking down the bar riers between the two races in the South If there Is such law it hasn't manifest ed itself in this region. at all events.