Page:Why colored people in Philadelphia are excluded from the street cars.djvu/11

 the most radical, united in expressions of the sincerest regret that the late Mayor Henry positively declined again to be their candidate. Now it is the general belief of those who have all along taken an interest in this matter, that, with the assistance of the Mayor, our colored people could have gained full admission to the cars more than eighteen months ago, just as similar admission was obtained for the colored people of New York, through the energetic course adopted in their favor by Police Commissioner Ecton. There was then a sort of factitious public feeling still running in favor of colored folks; war-made abolitionism had not all melted away; peace had not come, and we might need more of them to fight for us; these facts had their effect on the public mind, and were reflected or the Board of Presidents; the Fifth and Sixth Street Company tried the experiment of admission for a month; their whole line was beginning to waver, when just then the Mayor stepped to their side with his powerful official influence and aid, and turned the scale in their favor. In their battle with the car-invading negroes, he was their needle-gun. And yet, with a full knowledge of these facts, no one doubts that the Republicans, last October, would gladly have re-elected Mr. Henry as their Mayor, and that by a larger majority than he ever before received. And it must be admitted that the late Mayor is a most respectable man. By almost universal consent, he was as brave and incorruptible in office as he has always been pure in morals and unaffected in piety in private life. Possibly, here and there an extremist might be found to object, that, thus openly to set up, as he did, his own prejudices and those of his family, in the place of law, justice and humanity, as his rule of official conduct, to the manifest injury of twenty-seven thousands of innocent people, was a most shameless abuse of power and perversion of authority. But this objection, with the word shameless, cannot be admitted except with a difference. A young child, rolling upon the carpet and freely exposing its little person, no one calls shameless; it is simply unconscious. Just so was the late Mayor Henry. Many great and good men have done gross wrongs unconsciously. Paul, when he was "haling men and women," very much as our policemen were permitted to do last year, and with