The political safety and social elevation of the negro race depend on the resolution, patience and enterprise with which it takes up this work of self-development. And the only way the friends of the black man can permanently protect him, is to help him gain this inward power. The primer and the Testament, well used, will be a better paladium than Congressional enactments. The grammar schools and colleges, the industrial and theological schools, and the churches, where a more reasonable and sober religion may be taught them, will do more to secure their rights as freemen than a standing army can do. The other party, looking out for “rocks ahead,” is the nation itself. Victorious in the struggle for its very existence, it has been ever since in constant perplexity as to the way of readjustment which would make its future safe. For a dozen years the Southern question has been one of commanding interest and momentous importance. The wisdom of our statesmen has been taxed to the utmost to avert calamities continually impending. But although time, and the steady purpose of the North to have equal rights for all recognized and enforced everywhere, and the new policy of pacification, have done much to change the perilous condition of things, and bring quiet, the danger is by no means gone. It has changed its complexion, but it lurks there still. The dense ignorance, the wide spread immorality, the pride of blood, the antagonism of races, the prevalence of mischievous notions about capital and labor, the indolence and “shiftlessness” of great numbers of the working class, the ambitions that will seize and manipulate these diverse elements with shrewdness and trained skill, still exist all over the great South, and are likely to make it a turbulent caldron of contentious elements for years to come. Race conflicts and class feuds are likely to arise, and sectional hatreds are ready to break out again, with new danger to the whole country. How can the nation protect itself against such dangers? Only by this method of self-development. The South must become homogeneous in itself, and harmonious with the North by the spread of intelligence and right principles. Education and a reasonable religion will bring all up to a higher level, break down walls of difference, give broader and better ideas. They would so change the whole structure of Southern society, and unify its various elements, that the causes of dissension that now exist would exist no longer. The American Missionary Association, then, is giving to the colored race its best and only permanent protection. It helps the black man to develop his inward power, so that his defence shall be in himself. And its work is the nation’s safeguard, for by promoting intelligence, integrity and moral power throughout the South, it increases the elements that alone make a Republic safe. Every motive of philanthropy and patriotism urges us to push forward its work more earnestly. MADISON, WIS.