Page:Why colored people in Philadelphia are excluded from the street cars.djvu/12

 purposes not dissimilar, since both were actuated by the spirit of persecution, "verily thought" that he "ought to do" these things; though it is true, at that time, Paul did not pretend to be a Christian. We may, however, rest assured that when by such an inverted arrangement of the moral forces as is described above, only negroes are brought within the official vice and made to feel sharp pressure, neither the late Mayor, nor the great majority of his friends and supporters, see the matter in any discreditable light. And it may as well be confessed, once for all, that to treat a man's sentiments in respect to negroes as of any importance, in making up your estimate of his character; or to announce, as your own motive, in whatever you may do for colored people, the simple desire to do them good, because it is just, irrespective of any object beyond, such as to save white recruits, to weaken an enemy, or to gain possible future votes,—is to bring upon yourself the contempt, secret or open, strong or mild, of nine-tenths of the people you meet. When Mr. Charles Gibbons, in his stirring address to the Union League, shortly after the murder of Mr. Lincoln, described this murder and other crimes of the South as "representative acts," and logically referred to the wrongs done to the colored people in this city in the same connection, the conclusion of his address was pronounced "anti-climax." "After electrifying his audience," it was said, "he flatted right down to the small matter of the cars and colored people." Now while anything which relates to the final position in this country of four millions of its people, a question which has already caused one war, and which may cause another, is contemptuously termed "small" by highly intelligent and influential men, we have much to learn and much to suffer before this question can be settled. Another class indication of public feeling on this subject must not be passed by in silence. At a late series of large and excited meetings of our clergy and laity convened to remonstrate against the running of the street cars on Sunday, not a word was said by the remonstrants, though their attention was called to the matter, against the exclusion of colored people from these cars on week-days. Like the grand juries, they ignored the subject. Further, it is believed that only three of the white