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Frederick Douglass is hopeful.  In a recent address he says:  “A great change has taken place among the colored race—­vast and wonderful has it been.  It seems as if we had realized the vision of St. John when he saw a new heaven and a new earth.  But the change has come at last.  The time has come when we can look our fellow-citizens in the face and share in the glory of the country.”

No man has a better right to say this than he, for his life has touched the degraded condition of the slave and the exalted position of an Embassador of this great Republic.  He adds:  “Some talk of exterminating our race, and others say we will soon die out, but I tell you both are impossible.  If slavery could not kill us, liberty won’t.”  Liberty ought to do more than save them alive.  It ought to educate, elevate and Christianize them.

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The Independent quotes from Dr. Mayo’s address before the American Social Science Association on “The Third Estate,” in which the Doctor, refers to the strange population of the great Southern mountain world—­nearly two millions at present—­as a body of people that sends forth a louder cry for the missionary of modern civilization than any other portion of the Republic, and adds: 

“What is also said by the Unitarian, Dr. Mayo, of the need of missionary work for this class of the Southern whites, calls for an emphasis even stronger than we 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?”

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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