Although it has appeared at one time or another that the race question was in process of settlement, yet always, just when that hope seemed brightest, it has been dashed to the ground, and the Question has reappeared in some new form as menacing as ever. In fact, it is much too weighty and far-reaching to be disposed of in a short time. Where ten millions of one race, which increases at a rate that doubles its numbers every forty years, confront within the borders of one country another race, the most opposite to it on earth, there must exist a question grave enough in the present and likely to become stupendous in the future. Next to Representative Government, this is to-day the most tremendous question which faces directly one-third of the people of the United States, and only less immediately all of them. It includes the labor question of the South, and must, in time, affect that of the whole country. It does more; it affects all those conditions which make life endurable and, perhaps, even possible in a dozen States of the Union. Wherever it exists, it is so vital that it absorbs for the time being all the energies of the people, and excludes due consideration of every other question whatsoever. In dealing with this Question in the past, nearly every mistake that could possibly be made has been made, and to-day, after more than thirty-five years of peace and of material prosperity, the Question is apparently as live as it was over a generation ago, when national passion was allowed to usurp the province of deliberation, and the Negro was taught two fundamental errors: first, that the Southern white was inherently his enemy, and, secondly, that his race could be legislated into equality with the white. One unfortunate fact is that that portion of the white race living at a distance from the region where the Problem is most vital have been trained to hold almost universally one theory as to the Question, while the portion who face the problem every day of their lives have quite solidly held a view absolutely the opposite. A singular feature of this difference in the views held by the two sections is that whatever Southerners have said about conditions at the South relating to the Negroes has usually been received incredulously at the North, and it is only when some Northerner has seen those conditions for himself and found the views of the Southerners to be sound that those views were accepted. Thus, we have had exhibited the curious fact that evidence upon a most vital matter has been accepted rather with reference to the sectional status of the witness than to his opportunity for exact knowledge.