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VIATORIAN
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Facet Spera ·VOLUME 24
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MAY 1907
NUMBER 8
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E . J. Solon, 'o8. ~ ECLUDED within these knowledge-teerriin·g walls that ~ speak to us of naught but the deep reasor:ing of an Aristotle or a St. Thomas, that echo the ach1evements of an Alexander and a Caesar, and ever ready to spread before our gaze, the orations of a Ci<,:ero; or to listen to the songs of a · · ·v irgil? a :K1ilton or our own silver-tongued Longfellow, we, who are blessed with a continual shower of opportunities to equip . ourselves to battle suco.essfully with the various questions that may haunt our destined paths throughout our active life, have seldom, if ever privileged with a moment's consideration, a problen1 which has time and again caused the public platform\ to tremble under. the thunderous eloquence of orators, a problem which is demanding the attention of the N'o rtherner as well as the Southerner, and that is the Negro Question. I neither deem i.t my place nor is it my intention to relate to you in detail, those events that comprised your school-clay task, now revered as almost ancien:t history; how in 1619, the James River reluctantly parted its sighing waves to permit a D1utch 'sailing-vessel to pi3:ss, for the purpose o£ introducing on its banks, negro slavery, an event that has marred the beauty of QUr fair land. Casting a hurried g lance over the Wlorlcl's pas·t, we s,ee the Romans, the greatest people of their day, with their · slaves; but Brownson remarks very wisely, they were a great nation for their own times, but not for all times, for slavery w·a s a disgrace indulged in by all the then known world. But this -day of enlightenmrnt shudders at . the supposition that such a: system of barbarity can exalt a people to the lofty heights of renown and prosperity, w·hich are now the merited and undisputed claims of our own gallant country. But whom are we to blame for this sad experience of slaveholding? M1ay not this national guilt be rightly laid upon the 1
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