Taking up the reins of the Administration of the Government, with its complex statesmanship, where a master had laid them down, President Roosevelt, heretofore known for his sterling worth as an administrator, and his imperial honesty as a man, has put forth no uncertain sound as to his intended course. The announcement that the foreign policy of his illustrious predecessor would be chiefly adhered to has struck a responsive chord in every patriotic heart. The appointment of ex-Gov. Jones, of Alabama, to a Federal judgeship was an appointment in unison with the best of popular accord. The nobility of the Governor in his utterances on the subject of lynching should endear him to every lover of justice and the faithful execution of law. For he so grandly evinced what is so sadly wanting in many humane and law-abiding men—the courage of his convictions.

It is only to the fruition of such expressions, the molding of an adverse sentiment to such lawlessness that we can look for the abolishment of that crime of crimes which, to the disgrace of our country, is solely ours.

This appointment is considered eminently wise, not only for the superior ability of the appointee as a jurist, but for his broad humanity as a man, fully recognizing the inviolability of human life and its subjection to law. For the Negro, his primal needs are protection and the common liberty vouchsafed to his fellow-countrymen. To enjoy them it is necessary that he be in harmony with his environments. A bulwark he must have, of a friendship not the product of coercion, but a concession from the pulse-beat of justice. Such appointments pass the word down the line that President Roosevelt, in his endeavor to be the exponent of the genius of American citizenship, will recognize the sterling advocates of the basic elements of constitutional Government, those of law and order, irrespective of party affiliation.

This appointment will probably cause dissent in Republican circles, but it may be doubted if the Negro advances his political fortunes by invidious criticism of the efforts of a Republican Administration to harmonize ante-bellum issues. For while he in all honesty may be strenuous for the inviolability of franchises of the Republican household, and widens the gap between friendly surroundings, each of the political litigants meet with their knees under each other's mahogany, and jocularly discuss Negro idiosyncrasies, and tacitly agree to give his political aspirations a "letting alone." For, with character and ability unquestioned for the discharge of duties, the vote polled for him usually falls far short of the average of that polled by his party for other candidates on the ticket.

The summary killing of human beings by mobs without the form of law is not of late origin. Ever since the first note of reconstruction was sounded, each Administration has denounced lynching. All history is the record that it is only through discussion and the ventilation of wrong that right becomes a valued factor. But regard for justice is not diminishing in our country. The judiciary, although weak and amenable to prevailing local prejudices in localities, as a whole is far in advance on the sustenance of righteous rule than in the middle of the last century, when slavery ruled the Nation and its edicts were law, and its baleful influence permeated every branch of the Government.

Of the judiciary at that period Theodore Parker, an eminent Congregational divine and most noted leader of Christian thought, during a sermon in 1854, said:

"Slavery corrupts the judicial class. In America, especially in New England, no class of men has been so much respected as the judges, and for this reason: We have had wise, learned, and excellent men for our judges, men who reverenced the higher law of God, and sought by human statutes to execute justice. You all know their venerable names and how reverentially we have looked up to them. Many of them are dead, and some are still living, and their hoary hairs are a crown of glory on a judicial life without judicial blot. But of late slavery has put a different class of men on the benches of the Federal Courts—mere tools of the Government creatures who get their appointments as pay for past political service, and as pay in advance for iniquity not yet accomplished. You see the consequences. Note the zeal of the Federal judges to execute iniquity by statute and destroy liberty. See how ready they are to support the Fugitive Slave Bill, which tramples on the spirit of the Constitution and its letter, too; which outrages justice and violates the most sacred principles and precepts of Christianity. Not a United States Judge, Circuit or District, has uttered one word against that bill of abominations. Nay, how greedy they are to get victims under it. No wolf loves better to rend a lamb into fragments than these judges to kidnap a fugitive slave and punish any man who desires to speak against it. You know what has happened in Fugitive Slave Bill courts. You remember the 'miraculous' rescue of a Shadrach; the peaceable snatching of a man from the hands of a cowardly kidnapper was 'high treason;' it was 'levying war.' You remember the trial of the rescuers! Judge Sprague's charge to the jury that if they thought the question was which they ought to obey, the laws of man or the laws of God, then they must 'obey both,' serve God and Mammon, Christ and the devil in the same act. You remember the trial, the ruling of the bench, the swearing on the stand, the witness coming back to alter and enlarge his testimony and have another gird at the prisoner. You have not forgotten the trials before Judge Kane at Philadelphia and Judge Greer at Christiana and Wilkesbarre.

"These are natural results from causes well known. You cannot escape a principle. Enslave a negro, will you? You doom to bondage your own sons and daughters by your own act."

At the death of Theodore Parker, among the many eulogies on his life was one by Ralph Waldo Emerson, highly noted for his humanity, his learning and his philosophy. It contains apples of gold, and richly deserves immortality; for in the worldly strife for effervescent wealth and prominence, a benign consciousness that our posthumous fame as unselfish benefactors to our fellow-men is to live on through the ages, would be a solace for much misrepresentation. Emerson said: "It is plain to me that Theodore Parker has achieved a historic immortality here. It will not be in the acts of City Councils nor of obsequious Mayors nor in the State House; the proclamations of Governors, with their failing virtue failing them at critical moments, that generations will study what really befel; but in the plain lessons of Theodore Parker in this hall, in Faneuil Hall and in legislative committee rooms, that the true temper and authentic record of these days will be read. The next generation will care little for the chances of election that govern Governors now; it will care little for fine gentlemen who behaved shabbily; but it will read very intelligently in his rough story, fortified with exact anecdotes, precise with names and dates, what part was taken by each actor who threw himself into the cause of humanity and came to the rescue of civilization at a hard pinch; and those who blocked its course.

"The vice charged against America is the want of sincerity in leading men. It does not lie at his door. He never kept back the truth for fear of making an enemy. But, on the other hand, it was complained that he was bitter and harsh; that his zeal burned with too hot a flame. It is so hard in evil times to escape this charge for the faithful preacher. Most of all, it was his merit, like Luther, Knox, and Latimer and John the Baptist, to speak tart truth when that was peremptory and when there were few to say it. His commanding merit as a reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pulpit—I cannot think of one rival—that the essence of Christianity is its practical morals; it is there for use, or it is nothing: If you combine it with sharp trading, or with ordinary city ambitions to glaze over municipal corruptions or private intemperance, or successful frauds, or immoral politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbing of frontier natives, it is hypocrisy and the truth is not in you, and no love of religious music, or dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley or of Jeremy Taylor, can save you from the Satan which you are."