"In Haiti," says the late Minister Price, "the black man is in possession of national responsibility. In Haiti he is called upon to form his character, and to conduct his movements at his own risk; he receives directly the consequences, and suffers the deplorable results, of his own errors and passions. He is not being _led along_ in civilization; he moves on the road by his own efforts. He is marching without any support on which to lean; without any other force than his own. And when he shall become sufficiently advanced to remove all doubt; when he shall become sufficiently free from his errors, and shall have sufficiently conquered his passions which now retard his steps, it will be evident that he has accomplished this result because he willed it, and because he had within his being the necessary force for its accomplishment." According to Mr. Price there will be no one who can say of the Haitians: "We civilized and educated you; none who can say: without us you would soon have relapsed into African barbarism." Haiti's mission as he understood it is to rehabilitate the Negro race. His dying gift to mankind was his splendid work on the Rehabilitation of the Black Race by the Republic of Haiti.
It is Price who says: "The Negro who shows his dainty hands and his little feet, and is piqued because, with adornments the aristocrats, who are also adorned with little hands little feet do not open their doors to him is an ignoramus and a poltroon, and is still a slave."
I shall close this paper with the counsel of Haiti to the African Race as voiced by the same author.
"As to the children of the African race, I could wish to see them everywhere, disdain public offices, in order that they might enter into civilization not by the door that the slaveocrats and politicians point out, but by that door through which has passed the real white democracy--knowledge and industry. When one is the son of a serf, who but yesterday was beaten and cuffed without mercy, and aspires to manhood, it is the workman's blouse that he must put on. The blouse leads to the conventional black and white gloves. But he who wishes to commence by a black suit, ought to put a napkin on his arm, and place himself as a servant, behind the man who wears a blouse.