"It is not the law, gentlemen, vainly to call two blades of grass identical, vainly to call the hare and tiger alike and equal; vainly to call, if you like, black the same as white. The law is that if it be possible for the hare to approach its neighbor in ways desirable, it be given its _chance_ to do so. If the black man can grow like to the white in all human attainments, if he can grow and succeed, then let him have the _chance_ to do so. "But that same chance of betterment and advancement, that same selfish chance to prevail and to survive, that chance to succeed given under the divine intent, must be accorded also to that creature known as the white man. If he, the white man, can prevail, can survive, can succeed, he, too, must have his chance. That is the law! But the chance of either white or black man is his own and is not negotiable. That is the law! Not without fitness can there be ultimate success. Not until the fullness of the years can there be attainment for any creature of this earth. That is the law! There is no tree growing in the center of this ordained universe wherefrom the full fruit of survival and of success may be plucked and eaten without effort and without earning. No individual has done it. No one can do it. Bounty and gift do not make success. It must be _won!_ "Is this doctrine difficult? If so, we can not change it. It is the great law, irrevocable and unamendable, and it is no more kind and no more cruel than life itself is kind or cruel. It is the law. That is the law! "The makers of the Constitution, the amenders of the Constitution-- that document subject to change, subject to being ignored, as has been the case--could never, under the enduring law, guarantee success plucked as an apple for each and every man who had not earned it. Gentlemen, talk not to me of the broad charity of this nation, or of its general justice to humanity. Call not this piece-work Constitution of ours, amended and subject to amendment, an approach to divine charity or wisdom. No; for in some of its effects it has proved to be the most cruel and unjust measure ever known in all human laws. "It was cruel and unjust to whom? To us? To the white man? No, no. It was cruel in that it presented a title to success, to fitness and to survival unto eager, ignorant hands, and then by its own limitations snatched that title away from them again. It sought to do that which can not be done--to establish growth instead of the chance to grow. It was cruel. It was unjust. In the wisdom of a later day its patchwork form must once more be changed. It must be changed as a protection, no more against the former slaves of the South than against the future slaves of the North.