It is creditable to the people of the South that no such outrage on nature and common sense is found in all her borders. God has made the negro an inferior being, not in most cases, but all cases, for there are no accidents or exceptions in His works. There never could be such a thing as a negro equaling the standard Caucasian in natural ability. The same Almighty Creator has also made all white men equal—for idiots, insane people, etc., are not exceptions, they are results of human vices, crimes, or ignorance, immediate or remote. What a false and vicious state of society, therefore, when human institutions violate this eternal order, and by withholding education from their own brethren, educate the inferior negro, and in a sense make him superior to white men, by setting aside the law of God! Some of the States have passed laws against teaching negroes to read; a more extended and enlightened knowledge of the negro will, doubtless, some day govern this matter through public opinion, and without governmental interference. The negro learns from his master all he needs to know, all that he can know, in a proper sense, all that is essential to the performance of his duties, or necessary to his happiness and the fulfilment of the purposes to which nature has adapted him; and though there might, perhaps, be no good reason given why he should be prohibited from learning to read, it is sufficient to say that it is absurd, as well as a waste of time that should be carefully employed. His mental powers are unable to grapple with science or philosophy, or abstractions of any kind, and it would be folly to suppose that he would be or could be interested in history or biography, in which his race, his instincts, his wants have no share, record, or connection whatever. All this applies, of course, to the South—to negroes in their normal condition and natural relation to the superior race. It may be well enough at the North, as long as they have mongrels and free negroes, to provide schools for them, as they have no other guide or protector but the State itself, but though they thus acquire a certain kind of mental activity, as observed, it is at the expense of the vital forces, and another of those incidental causes that tend to the final extinction of this abnormal element. It is, however, a disgrace, and, to a certain extent, a crime in any State to educate negroes or mongrels, so long as they have one single uneducated white man within their limits. The proof of this is seen every day in the _fact_ that however educated, or whatever the seeming mental superiority of the “colored” man, the uneducated white man tolerates no equality. Thus nature vindicates her rights, and whatever the ignorance, delusion, or crimes of society, the eternal order fixed by the hand of God is inevitable and everlasting. CHAPTER XVIII. THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.