“Mr. Harding, in speaking of their progress, intimates that these results have been reached by their own unaided efforts. The fact is that the elementary schools of which he speaks are sustained almost entirely by the southern white people, who, in the midst of their own grinding poverty, have taxed themselves to the extent of $50,000,000 to educate the children of their former slaves. The colored churches of to-day are the legitimate fruit of the faithful work done amongst the slaves before the war by white missionaries. “Two hundred and fifty millions is a vast sum. Could a race gather and hold so much in a commonwealth where its rights are being trampled upon with impunity? The question answers itself. There is, in truth, no place on earth where the common negro laborer has so good an opportunity as between the Potomac and Rio Grande. Here he is admitted to all the trades, toils side by side with white workmen, and is protected in person and property so long as he justifies protection. “As to the statement that one thousand have been lynched in the past ten years, doubtless Mr. Harding accepts without further examination the crooked figures of partisan newspapers. But, granting this horrible record to be true, it must be acknowledged that the man does something to call forth such treatment. Along with the telling of our alleged bloodthirstiness, there should be related the frequency and atrocity of his outrages against our homes. The south willingly appeals to the judgment of civilized mankind as to the truth of her declaration that the objects of enlightened government are as well secured here as on any portion of the globe. “That Mr. Harding and his sympathizers are actuated by excellent motives, I do not mean to question. “We are as mindful as others of the dangerous tendency of resorting to lawlessness, but strangers cannot understand the situation as well as those who are personally familiar with it and have suffered by it. It is much to be regretted, of course, that lynchings occur, but it is far more to be regretted that there are so many occasions for them. When the sanctity of woman is violated, man, if man he be, cannot but choose to avenge it. If the villain did not commit the crime for which this penalty is inflicted, then we would not be inflamed to summary vengeance. The perpetrator of this deed, the most heinous of all crimes and to which death is often added, need not complain when vengeance is visited upon him in a swift and merciless manner, according with the teaching of his own villainy.