“We hed a blessid and improvin time yisterday. My little flock staggered in at the usual hour in the mornin, every man in a heavenly frame uv mind, hevin bin ingaged all nite in a work uv mercy, to wit: a mobbin uv two enrollin officers. One uv em resisted, and they smote him hip and thigh, even ez Bohash smote Jaheel. (Skriptooral, wich is nessary, bein in the ministry.) He wuz left for dead. “We opened servis by singin a hym, wich I writ, commencin ez follows:-- “Shel niggers black this land possess, And mix with us up here? O, no, my friends; we rayther guess We’ll never stand that ’ere.”[230] [_Laughter._] I ask if that is not the Senator’s speech? [_Laughter._] I know not whether it is necessary for me to go further. Something more, I might say. Very well, I will; the Senator rather invites me. The Senator becomes here the representative of Caste; and where, Sir? In a Christian church; and while espousing that cause, he pleads the National Constitution. Now, Sir, I have to repeat--and here I am determined not to be misunderstood--we have no right to enter the church and interfere in any way with its religious ordinances, as with the raising of the Host; but when a church organization asks the benefit of the law by an act of incorporation, it must submit to the great primal law of the Union,--the Constitution of the United States, interpreted by the Declaration of Independence. The Senator smiles again; I shall come to that by-and-by. Whenever a church organization seeks incorporation, it must submit to the great political law of the land. It can have the aid it seeks only by submitting to this political law. Here is nothing of religion; it is the political law, the law of justice, the law of Equal Rights. The Senator says, No; they may do as they please in churches, because they are churches, because they are homes of religion, of Christianity; there they may insult on account of the skin. I call that a vindication of Caste, and Caste in one of its most offensive forms. You all know, Sir, the history of Caste. It is the distinction of which we first have conspicuous record in the East, though it has prevailed more or less in all countries; but it is in the East that it showed itself in such forms as to constitute the type by which we describe the abuse. It is an offensive difference between persons founded on birth, not unlike that maintained among us on account of a skin received from birth. And now pardon me, if I call attention to the way in which this discrimination has been characterized by the most eminent persons familiar with it. I begin with the words of an estimable character known in religion and also in poetry,--Bishop Heber, of Calcutta, who pictured Caste in these forcible terms:--