black as imagination can conceive it, the present and prospective
condition of the people who are, primarily, the beneficiaries. The
work and its maintenance has really become a heavy strain upon the
patience and generosity of the liberal givers of the land--whose
profuse behests have no parallel in the history of any people. They
have kept it up wellnigh a quarter of a century; and it is no
disparagement to their zeal to say the tax upon them is becoming more
of a burden than a pleasure. They have done in the name of humanity
and of God for the unfortunate needy what the government should have
done for its own purification and perpetuity for the co-equal citizen.
And it is high time that the government should relieve the individual
from the unjust and onerous tax.

I do not hesitate to affirm, that while the work done by the
charitable for the black citizen of this Republic has been of the most
incalculable benefit to him, it has also done him injury which it will
take years upon years to eradicate. The misrepresentations resorted
to, to obtain money to "lift him up," have spread broadcast over the
land a feeling of contempt for him as a man and pity for his lowly and
unfortunate condition; so that throughout the North a business man
would much rather _give a thousand dollars_ to aid in the education of
the black heathen than to give a black scholar and gentleman an
opportunity to honestly _earn a hundred dollars_. He has no confidence
in the capacity of the black man. He has seen him pictured a savage,
sunk in ignorance and vice--an object worthy to receive alms, but
incapable of making an honest living. So that when a black man
demonstrates any capacity, shows any signs of originality or genius,
rises just a few inches above the common, he at once becomes an object
rare and wonderful--a "Moses," a "_leader_ of his people."--It is
almost as hard for an educated black man to obtain a position of trust