The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1907-06-08

nized the negro's racial inferiority,
and saw in him only the elements
of manual employments. From these
antipodal views grew that terrible 'ir-
resistible conflict and now, thirty
years after the negroes emancipation
the question of his social standing
and political rights is as much a prob
lem as it was before he was stamped
with the ennobling habiliments OF
American citizenship. We affirm that
civil society is "a compromise OF ma
tural rights and that political free
dom is not so much a gratuitious gift
as it IS a reward for the possession Of
certain mental excellencies and moral
virtues Political rights, therefore,
are blessings to be earned and de-
served and cannot accrue to those
untitled to enjoy them, any more
than medicine can be assimilated by
a dead man. Such persons may enjoy
the form, but to them the substance
and reality must be narcotic, and
wholly uncongenial to them Society
may arbitrarily declare all men
equal but it is powerless to enforce
her decree in favor of those untitled
to meet its duties and possibilities.
To successfully enforce such a de-
cree would obliterate all distinctions
between the Just and the unjust
the deserving and the undeserving
the superior and the inferior-thus
creating a permanent abnormal con-
dition. a thing that never has been
and never can be. Artificial expedi-
ents may temporarily embarass the
natural order, but in the final OUT
come the latter will survive and
override the former. This aspect of
the negro problem was overlooked
by those who sought by sudden tran
sition to elevate him to a social and
political plane for which nature and
environment had utterly failed him.
Social elevation is gradual growth
and not a miraculous transformation.
Whatever may have been the extent
and frequency OF such transforma-
tons in early times, there is no in
stance in the modern knowledge of
man where the natural order has
been for one minute suspended or set
aside, and the negio anomaly like all
others, will be solved strictly accord
ing TO nature-her laws and her cans
es .,
IF it could be shown that the ne
gro and the white man had a COM
mon origin, then the hypothesis
would be tenable. that through ma
tural affinities there are latent in the
negro's being the germs and ele-
ments from which may be evolved a
higher order and nobler type of man.
AS this fact cannot be automatically
ascertained, then the opposite hypo-
thesis presents itself, that two races
presenting such distinct types of man
could not have had a common origin
and this view is sustained by all reas-
oning from the laws governing all
animated nature and the deductions
from the eternal fitness of things.
The fact is, the history of man
furnishes no authentic data for the
almost universal belief that the two
races are of common parentage, and
all that men believe and fancy they
know favorable to this theory rests
upon the widest license to specula-
ton That the two races present
types of man radically different and
distinct is fact, abundantly attest
ed by the respective sciences of phre-
nology and physiology, the resem-
blance being limited almost entirely
to physical form and habits Aside
from this, their co-existence is only
possible on the basis of the white
race prescribing the social terms and
conditions. The white man from his
sunrise down through all the succeed
ing ages and cycles of time has dis
played upon the stage of human ex-
istence his transcendant superiority,
not only pdoving himself equal to
but the master of the trying orieals
and intricate problems which have
ever beset the path of his advanc-
ing civilization. In later times the
negro was discovered in wild
country, amidst ali the environments
of barbarous existence. from
whence he was sna5ched by the cum
ming hand of commerce and trans
ported to he scenes of civilized life
After several hundred years spent
within the radi,fs of elevating infu-
ences. he has made no more advance
ment as a race than entities him to
be considered semi-civilized being
In vain de wo search for any foot
prints lett by the negro upon the
sands OF time. Or any impress made
by him upon the trinity of art,
science and literature. Neither has
he made any contr button to me-
chanical invention, or discovered any
intensive process which, being APP
piled to industrial economics, would
make two blades of grass to thrive