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more educated and enterprising class, who are more fitted to direct and utilise labour than to do the mere manual work. Such a field might, I fancy, be found in South Africa, if we could humanise a great labouring population and establish a state of things such that a young man of good education, good tact, and real energy might successfully work a large farm or other enterprise with the aid of native labour.

All this, however, is chiefly speculation. I only throw out these hints as showing the sort of problems I have had in my mind when I went to study 'the nigger question' in America, with the result set out in the following pages.

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BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTHERN

STATES.

DURING a recent tour in the United States I was particularly anxious to obtain information regarding the relation of the black and white races, not only because the subject is in itself of immense interest to commerce and humanity, but because it is of special interest to ourselves, called on to deal with masses of the black race in South Africa, and the possessors of many lands in which white and coloured races are intermingled. In some of our colonies it has been supposed that the free negro has shown a great indisposition to labour. On the other hand, cotton, the great staple of the Southern States, and formerly almost entirely raised by slave labour, has been produced in larger quantity since emancipation than ever it was before. How, I sought to know, has that been managed, political disturbances and difficulties notwithstanding?

As regards political questions, too, I am much impressed with the belief that our management of territories where white and black races are intermixed has not always been successful. An oligarchical sys tem of government generally prevails in our tropical

colonies, under which considerable injustice has, I think, sometimes been done to the East Indian labourers imported to take the place of the emanci pated negroes. Except in the Cape Colony proper no political representation has been allowed to the coloured races. I was, then, very anxious to see the effect of the political emancipation of the negroes in the Southern States of the Union.

In the course of my tour I have had opportunities of conversing with many men of many classes (and quite as much on one side of politics as the other), who have had the greatest experience of the blacks in various aspects--educational, industrial, political, and other. I am indebted to them for information given to me with a freedom, frankness, and liberality for which I cannot be sufficiently grateful; to none more so than to many Southern gentlemen who have gone through all the bitternesses of a great war on the losing side and the social revolution which fol lowed-men whose good temper and fairness of statement, after all that has passed, commanded my admiration. I have visited not only the towns but the rural districts of four of the principal States formerly slave-holding, viz., Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; and it so happened that I was in South Carolina ( the ne plus ultra of Southernism) on the day of the late general election. I have seen and conversed with the negroes in their homes and in their fields, in factories, in churches, and in political meetings, and I think I have also been able to learn something of a very prominent

part of the population-the negresses. I feel that a single tour must still leave much to be learnt, but I have honestly weighed and compared all the infor mation I have obtained from different sources, and submit the general result for what it may be worth. If my conclusions do not in themselves carry much weight, I hope that I may perhaps succeed in indicating some points worthy of inquiry and discussion.

THE CHARACTER AND CAPACITY OF THE NEGRO.

In

The first and most difficult question is the capa city of the negro as compared with other races. one sense all men are born equal before God; but no one supposes that the capacities of all men are equal, or that the capacities of all races are equal, any more than the capacities of all breeds of cattle or dogs, which we know differ widely. There is, therefore, no prima facie improbability of a difference of capacity between the white Aryan and the negro race, though I believe there is no ground for presuming that white races must be better than black.

It is unnecessary to try to distinguish between differences due to unassisted nature and those due to domestication and education. No doubt the varieties of wild animals found in different countries differ considerably; but the differences due to cultivation seem to be still more prominent in the animals and plants with which we are best acquainted. It is enough to take the negro as he is, and his history and

surroundings need only be briefly glanced at in so far as they afford some key to his present position and immediate prospects.

The negro race now in America is derived from an admixture of people of various African tribes, probably differing considerably among themselves, but all, it may be assumed, in a more or less savage and little civilised condition. They have all passed two or three generations in slavery to white men, during which period all traces of their various origin have been lost, as well as their original languages and habits. And now, though variety of breed, affecting their capacity, may still to some degree be present, if we could trace it, I believe that it is impossible to do so, and that we must deal with them as a single, English-speaking people. They are also now all Christians; and though some African traditions may linger among them, they have for the most part adopted the dress and manners of their white masters, and have been greatly civilised. In this latter respect there is, however, a considerable distinction. One portion of the negroes has lived in parts of the country where the white population was numerous— equal to or more numerous than the blacks—and thus, working among and in very intimate contact with white people, has very thoroughly learned their ways, habits, and ideas. But there is a broad belt round the outer portion of the Southern States where the climate is very injurious to the white man, and almost impossible to the ordinary white labourer. In this tract, containing much of the most productive

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