"Not so fast! If they are not rooted, they are taking root. They have a stronger hold with every year. If any of us felt in the way you suppose, we should have to keep our thoughts to ourselves." "So you all keep your thoughts to yourselves for fear of each other. What a lightening of hearts, when you once come to an understanding! I wish it soon for your own sakes; but a few years in the life of a people are of small account. I am willing to wait for the fulness of time. The end is sure." "It all looks very simple to you, I dare say." "I do not undervalue your difficulties. The greatest is this miserable population that has crept over your borders from the older Slave States: progeny of outcasts and of reckless adventurers, they never had a country and have never found one. Without aims or hopes, they ask of their worthless life only its own continuance. Ignorant that they can never know anything worse than to remain what they are, dreading change more than those who may have something to lose by it, they uphold the system that dooms them to immobility, shameful Atlantes of the dismal structure." "You will not wonder that we are ready to renounce the theories of equality put forth by the men you would have us look to as founders. We make laws to keep our black servants from getting instruction. Do you think we could legislate the class you speak of into receiving it?" "Westlake, they are here. They are among you, and will be of you, or you of them." "We must take our precautions. We intend to do so. The dividing line must be more strongly marked. They must have their level prescribed to them, and be held to it." "The more you confirm their degradation, the more you prepare your own. The vile and abject, for being helpless, are not harmless. Unapt for honest service, but ready tools of evil, they corrupt the class whose parasites they are, tempting the strong and generous to tyranny and scorn." "You know them!" "They are known of old. The world has never wanted such. 'The wretches will not be dragged out to sunlight. They man their very dungeons for their masters, Lest godlike Liberty, the common foe, Should enter in, and they be judged hereafter Accomplices of freedom!' "But ten righteous men are enough to redeem a state. No State of ours but has men enough, greatly more than enough, to save and to exalt it, whose descent pledges them to integrity and entitles them to authority. Only let them know themselves, and stand by themselves and by each other. 'Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.' And it will. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation, but their virtues are a perpetual inheritance.