Every colored man should realize that the worst enemy of his race is the negro criminal, and above all the negro criminal who commits the dreadful crime of rape; and it should be felt as in the highest degree an offense against the whole country, and against the colored race in particular, for a colored man to fail to help the officers of the law in hunting down with all possible earnestness and zeal every such infamous offender.  Moreover, in my judgment, the crime of rape should always be punished with death, as is the case with murder; assault with intent to commit rape should be made a capital crime, at least in the discretion of the court; and provision should be made by which the punishment may follow immediately upon the heels of the offense; while the trial should be so conducted that the victim need not be wantonly shamed while giving testimony, and that the least possible publicity shall be given to the details.

The members of the white race on the other hand should understand that every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilization; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein.  No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered.  Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans.

Let justice be both sure and swift; but let it be justice under the law, and not the wild and crooked savagery of a mob.

There is another matter which has a direct bearing upon this matter of lynching and of the brutal crime which sometimes calls it forth and at other times merely furnishes the excuse for its existence.  It is out of the question for our people as a whole permanently to rise by treading down any of their own number.  Even those who themselves for the moment profit by such maltreatment of their fellows will in the long run also suffer.  No more shortsighted policy can be imagined than, in the fancied interest of one class, to prevent the education of another class.  The free public school, the chance for each boy or girl to get a good elementary education, lies at the foundation of our whole political situation.  In every community the poorest citizens, those who need the schools most, would be deprived of them if they only received school facilities proportioned to the taxes they paid.  This is as true of one portion of our country as of another.  It is as true for the negro as for the white man.  The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow the Negroes in a mass to grow to manhood and womanhood without education.  Unquestionably education such as is obtained in our public schools does not do everything towards making a man a good citizen; but it does much.  The lowest and most brutal criminals, those for instance