Page:A defence of the negro race in America from the assaults and charges of Rev. J. L. Tucker.djvu/16

 was an outrage, and his charges untrue and slanderous. I set before me, at this point, especially, the following summary of his charges. He says, (p. 21 :) "The great facts stare us in the face—that the race is increasing largely in numbers; that since the war but few of them have come up above the moral level of the race; that the average level in material prosperity is but little higher than it was before the war; that in morality there has been a great deterioration since the removal of the restraints of slavery; that there is now no upward movement whatever in morals, and if there is any change it is downward."

I address myself to the proof that these charges are false:

1st. The admission in this paragraph, viz., that "the race is increasing largely in numbers," is a refutation of the charge of general deterioration. Nothing is more established than the fact that a people given up to concubinage and license lose vitality, and decline in numbers. Through unbridled lust, and the commonality of their women, whole islands in the Pacific seas have long since taken up

and their populations have become utterly extinct. And so everywhere on earth, the integrity and the advance of a people's population have been conditioned on the growth and the permanency of the family feeling. The last census of the nation (1882) bears out these fundamental principles. The increase of the black population from 4,880,009, in 1870, to 6,577,497, in 1882, is in itself a complete refutation of Dr. Tucker's assertion. Its full force can only be seen in connection with another fact, viz., that in the face of the enormous immigration from Europe, added to the natural increase of the American white population, the rate of increase, is 34.8 for the black race to 29.2 for the white.

Observe that the rate of increase of the slave population