To find in this Negro problem nothing but the lust which brought him to our shores, or the instrumentality of the wealth which he has been the means of accumulating, or the object of a sentimental pietism which would colonize him, or a nuisance for progressive abatement, is to attempt to solve the puzzle of a bewildering maze without the exercise of wisdom, or to have exit from a labyrinth without a clew. But, with the right end in view, all the mysteries of it are easily solved. It has been recently said, by an able English writer, that the great plague of 1348-9 “is a totally new departure in English history, incomparably more important in its permanent effects than the conquest of William, the civil war of the fifteenth century, the civil war and the revolution of the seventeenth. It has left abiding results on the present condition of England. To it we owe the peculiar position of the English aristocracy and the equally peculiar position of the peasant. It created the poor law and the trades’ union. It was the origin of Lollardism, which was itself the precursor of the Reformation. Fortunately, it occurred after representative institutions had become a necessary part of English political life, or it would have destroyed them.” Under Providence, Lollardism and the Reformation were the final cause of pestilence, and it might have counted far more if the end had been more exactly understood at the time of the desolations. (2.) But that the Negro in the United States means, under Providence, a forward movement in the work of evangelizing the world may be inferred from _the moral and Christian element he has forced into American politics_. The final cause of a special Providence may not be apprehended by the large part of those who are the witnesses of its procedure; but its drift may be noted from the things they are constrained, under God, to think and say and do about it. A nation may be girded to a task, even without recognition of the hand or purpose of Him who girds; but that nation will be saying and doing very significant things. Now, the great enthusiasms of our political life for the century following the achieving of our independence have resulted in one way or another from the presence of the Negro. And this is the same as to say that the Negro has been the unwitting cause of the moral and religious elements in politics; for there are no great enthusiasms which have not a basis in either morals or religion. The courts, Cabinet, Congress, legislatures, the pulpit, the platform, the hearth, have furnished the arena for debate, harangue and purpose, which have enlarged our views of the brotherhood of man, kindled an unexampled enthusiasm for humanity, and deepened those moral convictions which are the basis of sound character. But for all these superior achievements in virtue, the black man has been the occasion, and must have our thanks. Selfish men, irreligious men, profane