The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-04-17
\ gPKncH WoRrH HEApINQ.


 A sPEDcH WORTH READING. If any of our readers have failed to read the speech of Mir. Cleveland de- liyered in New York last Tuesday night they should get 1t and read it carefully and attentively. It was not iRg speech. It was brief. and. like every thing that he says and writes, 1t was so plain that no one need misunderstood 1t. It was just such a speech as we might expect from . Northern man who is informed as to existing conditions in the South and who Is ready to do full justice to our people. Every portion of the speech Is worth reading, but we desire now to direct special attention to this part of it:
 I believe that the days of Uncle Toms Cabin are past do not believe that free or the enactment that suddenly in vested them with the rights of citizen ship, any more purged them of their racial and slavery-bred imperfections and deficiencies than that 1t changed the colo- nearly s,oo0,0oo negroes who have been intermixed with our citizenship. there Is still a greivous amount of ignorance. a sad amount of viciousness and a trernend- ous amount of laziness and thriftless- ness.
 "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver" says Solo, mon. and certainly those words of Mir. Cleveland were fitly spoken. and if they were not a reply to words elsewhere spoken or printed they were and are a 1t answer to what seems to be senti- ment prevailing among some who have made no effort to inform themselves. There are those who are apparently of the opinion that when the fogmer slaves were invested with the ''toga virilis' of citizenship they were also made. bv some wonderful process of transmutation or transformation. into enlightened and intelligent citizens: that the same act which struck the shackles from their physical lives also removed the shackles of ignorance and viciousness from their mental and moral beings.
 It was hardly necessary to tell this to Southern people. They know. as those of no other section can possibly know, that giving freedom to the negro gave him no added intelligence or knowledge, and that putting the ballot into his hands did not teach him it's value or the proper use of it. It was not needed that we of the South should be told this. but the words of Mr. Cleveland were directed to an audience which did need to be told something of the kind and those of his hearers who listened to him and their brethren of the North who have read his language win do well to profit by his wise utterances.
 Whether freeing the slaves was or was not mistake need not be discussed. but intelligent and unprejudiced men must all admit that the precipitation of several millions of ignorant freedmen into the ballot boxes of the South was both a mistake and a grievous wrong. It was a wrong to the white people who had to suffer all the consequences. bitter and humiliating beyond the power of words and it was wrong to the negro who found suddenly placed in his hands mighty weapon which he was totally united to wisld. He found himself. just relieved from dependence and ignorance. suddenly placed by the law on a level with those who Lad been centuries in reaching the position they occupied. He found himself a part ot our citizenship. but not of it in feeling, in education. in adaptability or in oppor- tunity.
 We say it was grevious wrong, to the manumitted slave to offer him that, w hich he was unable to grasp. His manumis- sion had not changed his nature, his in- tellect or his mental or moral perceptions | The day after he was freed he was the same dull witted and ignorant being that he was the day before He had made not step forward In the require nsnts of out volition of his own. sudd snly hrepght into an antagonism with his late asters which could but breed friction. rsee feel ing and social ruin if Tot checked. Il was a cruel wrong to the nsgro as i | was to the white man. thus to bring them by one sweep of the pen into a con dition where peace and fraternity were as impossible as 1t would have been tc order the negroes to become white.
 And what Mir. Cleveland said abou the determination of the white people a. to social equality and of the feeling O our people as to the education of tn, negro was equally true. As to the ques \ ton of equality, it is unnecessary to dis cuss it. because the South is an unit ol that subject, and nothing that can b. said or done by others will make an, change in the sentiment or course of th' Southern people. so that phase or tn subject need not be discussed at all
 But on the subject of educating tn colored people a few words may not b amiss, for there seems to be almost a much ignorance in the North on the aues ton as there is ignorance of any othe kind among the negroes. The South ern people have spent millions on negr education. They have spent much nor than they were really able to do, tu they have done it, partly because the. felt that it was due them and partly be cause the best and most intelligent senti ment of the South has felt that onl! by educating them could they be liftet up from the condition in which slaver! left them.