e could put on any
political conclusion. We pass this patriotic appeal along to
those who have the wealth that is seeking a worthy object on
which to expend itself. There are missionary societies whose
business it is to do this. For the Congregationalista, the
American Missionary Association will for a very moderate
amount establish a church and an academy in any one of a
hundred counties inhabited by these people, and what a man
with a million dollars to expend could do we hardly dare to
say. For the Presbyterians, the Board of Home Missions will do
the same; for the Methodists, their Missionary Society; for
the Episcopalians, their board of Domestic Missions; for the
Baptists, their Home Mission Society; and so on for all the
religious bodies. But will not a goodly company of wealthy men
supplement what the churches are doing in their collections,
by large gifts for this special, most needy, most fruitful,
and we declare most neglected mission work of the nation?"



* * * * *

Agitations on the surface are significant mainly as they are connected
with the larger movements of the deeper waters beneath. The re-election of
Speaker Reed to Congress, and the contest for the re-election of Mr.
Breckinridge in Arkansas; the Federal Election Bill, which proposes to
secure a free ballot for all men irrespective of color, and the Convention
in Mississippi, which aimed avowedly to curtail the voting of the colored
people--all these derive their importance from their relation to the
gravest problem of American statesmanship. That problem will not be
settled by the results of either of these current questions. For at the
bottom the real question is: Shall knowledge and character and property
become the possession of the colored race, and they thus be prepared for
their place in American politics, industry and prosperity, or will they be
allowed for the lack of these things t