But Cousin John Richard sez gently but strongly:
“Perhaps this is the fruit that the Lord of the harvest is causing to spring up from the seeds planted in the hearts of this people. Perhaps the full ripening of this fruit depends upon the sunshine of another and a calmer sky.”
“Yes,” sez I, “who knows but this race, who stood harmless and patient durin’ the War, while the first half of their chains wuz bein’ struck offen ’em, who showed such a spectacle of remarkable magnanimity and wisdom that the hull world admired and wondered, and who used their first weak strength to fight for the safety of the race that had held them in bondage—the race that could do this,” sez I, “has got the strength and the divine nobility and wisdom to get their full liberty in a nation of their own without the sound of a gun or the liftin’ of an arm in warfare.
“They will do it, too,” sez I, carried away and enthused by the thought of how this people had stood still and see the salvation of the Lord.
Sez I, “They will not turn into a brutal, blood-thirsty mob now, after ‘Thus far the Lord hath led them on.’”
I repeated these last words in my melodius him axents; but Col. Seybert wuzn’t melted by it—no, indeed.
He went on in witherin’ axents aginst the idee of colonization; sez he in conclusion:
“If there was not any other insurmountable objection to the project, the expense would be so enormous that the Government never would nor never could undertake it.”
“As to the never could, we might leave that out,” sez I, “and deal with the never would. For the never could hain’t true. If a war should break out to-morrow between this country and England, do you believe that this country never could furnish the means to carry it on? Why, it would seem the easiest thing in the world to raise millions on millions of dollars.
“It would seem the only thing and the right thing to do to imegiatly and to once raise ten times the amount that would be necessary to take the hull black race to the Congo Valley and support ’em there for a year.