Another difficulty in the way of a sound solution of the problem is the blind bigotry of the doctrinaire, which infects so many worthy persons. An estimable gentleman from Boston, of quite national reputation, observed a short time ago that it was singular that the Southerners who had lived all their lives among the Negroes should understand them so little, while they of the North who knew them so slightly should yet comprehend them so fully. He spoke seriously and this was without doubt his sincere belief. This would be amusing enough were it not productive of such unhappy consequences. It represents the conviction of a considerable element. Because they have been thrown at times with a few well-behaved, self-respecting Negroes, or have had in their employ well-trained colored servants, they think they know the whole subject better than those who, having lived all their life in touch with its most vital problems, have come to feel in every fibre of their being the deep significance of its manifestations. Such a spirit is the most depressing augury that confronts those who sincerely wish to settle the question on sound principles. With a Negro population which has increased in the last forty years from four and a half millions to nine millions, of whom eight millions inhabit the South and four and a half millions inhabit the six Southern Atlantic and Gulf States, where in large sections they outnumber the whites two and three to one, and in some parishes ten to one;[2] with this population owning less than 4 per cent. of the property and furnishing from 85 to 93 per cent. of the total number of criminals; with the two races drifting further and further apart, race-feeling growing, and with ravishing and lynching spreading like a pestilence over the country, it is time that all sensible men should endeavor as far as possible to dispel preconceived theories and look at the subject frankly and rationally.