Senator Hoar, like most others of his latitude, thinks that he knows the Negro, and understands the pending question. He does not. Had he understood the true gravity of that problem, his cheek, as he caught the echo of his own words, would have blanched at the thought of the peril he is transmitting to his children and grandchildren; not the peril, perhaps, of fire and massacre, but a peril as deadly, the peril of contamination from the overcrowding of an inferior race. All other evils are but corollaries; the evil of race-conflict, though not so awful as the French Revolution or San Domingo; the evil of growing armies with their menace to liberty; the evil of race-degeneration from enforced and constant association with an inferior race: these are some of the perils which spring from that state of affairs and confront us. At one more step they confront the rest of the Anglo-American people to-day. For the only thing that stands to-day between the people of the North and the Negro is the people of the South. The time may come when the only thing that will stand between the Negro and the people of the North will be the people of the South. II The chief difficulty in the solution of the question exists in the different views held as to it by the two sections. They do not understand it alike. They stand as widely divided as to it to-day as they stood forty years ago. Their ultimate interests are identical; their present interests are not very widely divergent. Their opposite attitudes as to it must, therefore, be due to error somewhere. One or the other section must be in error as to it; possibly neither may be exactly right. This much we know and can assert: there must be an absolutely right position. It is imperatively necessary that we find it; for on our discovery of it and our planting ourselves firmly on it depends our security. If we have not found it the sooner we realize that fact the better for us and for those that shall come after us; if we have found it the sooner we make it understood the better. One thing is certain, there is no security in silence; no safety in inaction. If fifty million Negroes, or even a much smaller number, are to come with San Domingo and the French Revolution in their train, the white race has need to awake and bestir itself. The recent census has happily showed that Senator Hoar and others like him have over-estimated the ratio of increase.[66] But the problem is grave enough as it is. The first step to be taken is to turn the light on the subject. Let it be examined, measured, comprehended, and then dealt with as shall be found to be just and right. The old method of crimination and defiance will no longer avail; we must deal with the question calmly, rationally, philosophically. We must abandon all untenable positions whatsoever, place ourselves on the impregnable ground of right, and then whatever may befall meantime, we can calmly await the inevitable justification of events.