“I do not believe,” said Miss Delany, “that the Southern white people themselves desire any wholesale exodus of the colored from their labor fields.  It would be suicidal to attempt their expatriation.”

“History,” said Professor Langhorne, “tells that Spain was once the place where barbarian Europe came to light her lamp.  Seven hundred years before there was a public lamp in London you might have gone through the streets of Cordova amid ten miles of lighted lamps, and stood there on solidly paved land, when hundreds of years afterwards, in Paris, on a rainy day you would have sunk to your ankles in the mud.  But she who bore the name of the ‘Terror of Nations,’ and the ‘Queen of the Ocean,’ was not strong enough to dash herself against God’s law of retribution and escape unscathed.  She inaugurated a crusade of horror against a million of her best laborers and artisans.  Vainly she expected the blessing of God to crown her work of violence.  Instead of seeing the fruition of her hopes in the increased prosperity of her land, depression and paralysis settled on her trade and business.  A fearful blow was struck at her agriculture; decay settled on her manufactories; money became too scarce to pay the necessary expenses of the king’s exchequer; and that once mighty empire became a fallen kingdom, pierced by her crimes and dragged down by her transgressions.”

“We did not,” said Iola, “place the bounds of our habitation.  And I believe we are to be fixtures in this country.  But beyond the shadows I see the coruscation of a brighter day; and we can help usher it in, not by answering hate with hate, or giving scorn for scorn, but by striving to be more generous, noble, and just.  It seems as if all creation travels to respond to the song of the Herald angels, ’Peace on earth, good-will toward men.’”

The next paper was on “Patriotism,” by Rev. Cantnor.  It was a paper in which the white man was extolled as the master race, and spoke as if it were a privilege for the colored man to be linked to his destiny and to live beneath the shadow of his power.  He asserted that the white race of this country is the broadest, most Christian, and humane of that branch of the human family.

Dr. Latimer took exception to his position.  “Law,” he said, “is the pivot on which the whole universe turns; and obedience to law is the gauge by which a nation’s strength or weakness is tried.  We have had two evils by which our obedience to law has been tested—­slavery and the liquor traffic.  How have we dealt with them both?  We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.  Millions of slaves and serfs have been liberated during this century, but not even in semi-barbaric Russia, heathen Japan, or Catholic Spain has slavery been abolished through such a fearful conflict as it was in the United States.  The liquor traffic still sends its floods of ruin and shame to the habitations of men, and no political party has been found with enough moral power and numerical strength to stay the tide of death.”