CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.

There are something like twelve millions of negroes in America, on the mainland and the adjacent islands—as large a proportion, perhaps, in view of their industrial adaptation, as there are of the Caucasian or dominant race; and, therefore, whatever may be the contingencies or the wants of the future, there would seem to be no necessity now for any further importation of these people. Of the twelve millions, there are between four and five millions in their normal condition at the South. There are, perhaps, half a million of so-called free negroes, about equally divided between North and South. There are about four millions in Brazil, Cuba, and Porto Rico of so-called slaves, but really in a widely different condition from that common to the South. Finally, there are between three and four millions of so-called free negroes in the tropics, in Jamaica, Hayti, and the other islands, with some thousands, however, scattered about the coast towns, and in the _terra caliente_ of the mainland. The free negro, in the American Union, as has been stated, is destined to extinction. It is only a question of time, when this doom will be accomplished. The census returns, and the universal experience, recognize this deplorable truth; but beyond them, and independent of any demonstration whatever, their extinction is a necessity—is as legitimate and unavoidable as any other _effect_ or effects linked by inevitable necessity with their predetermining cause or causes. They are not merely turned loose—abandoned to their fate without masters or protectors to look after them, but they are assumed to be Caucasians, _black_-white men, creatures like ourselves, with the same capacities, and the same wants, and though no one assumes to do so individually, _society_ forces them to live up to the theory in question, and, as this is impossible, as no human force or forces can set aside the ordinances of the Eternal, it destroys them. If, for example, laws were passed to change the color, the hair, the form of the limbs, or any _physical_ quality of the negro, and the whole power of the State was brought to bear upon him to compel him to be like the white man in these respects, it is obvious that nothing could be accomplished save the destruction of the unhappy creature. The capacities, the wants, the moral and intellectual nature of the negro, differ from our own to the precise extent that his physical nature or bodily structure differs from ours, and, therefore, Northern society, or rather that monstrous and malignant philanthropy which in its ignorance and blind impiety deems itself kind and beneficent, necessarily destroys the object of its solicitude when it strives to give him the rights of the white man, or to force him to change his moral and intellectual nature into that of the white man.

If all the children of the age of ten, in a given community, were turned from their homes into the street and left without their natural protectors to care and provide for their wants, they would perish in time, of course, if we could suppose them to remain at this age or condition. But if, in addition to this abandonment of these helpless ones, a theory were set up that they _had_ all the capabilities of the adult, and should, therefore, enjoy the rights and perform the duties of men and women, they would, of necessity, perish still more rapidly. If a dog, or horse, or other domestic animal were turned loose or lost its owner, it would sooner or later perish, but if some deluded “philanthropist” should set up the assumption that his bull-dog, for instance, was entitled to the rights and should enjoy the life of the hound, and therefore attempt to force it to exhibit the same qualities, the scent, sight, or swiftness that God has given the latter, he would, of course, destroy the poor thing with far greater rapidity than if he had simply turned it loose to shift for itself. Similar results do attend and must attend that malignant philanthropy and blind impiety which would impose the rights or force the duties of the white man on the differently organized and differently endowed negro. In Virginia and Maryland he is simply turned loose without any guide or protector or white man’s rights whatever, not even the right of free locomotion common to British subjects, and, therefore, lives longer, for there is no especial violence attempted—no direct effort made to force him to live out the life or to manifest the nature of widely different beings. But in Canada and Massachusetts, where white manhood is held so cheaply that the negro is supposed to be entitled to the same rights, and direct efforts are made to compel him to fulfill the same duties, where the little Prince of Wales in his recent visit declared that _he_ would not recognize those distinctions of race that originate in the mind of the Eternal and are fashioned by the hand of Omnipotence, which no amount or extent of human force, folly, impiety, or crime can obliterate even to the millionth part of a primordial atom, and which millions of years after those paltry distinctions of human invention which transform this common-place lad into an imaginary superiority over his fellows shall have disappeared, then he rapidly and miserably perishes.

The tendency to extinction, therefore, is always accelerated or diminished in exact proportion as “impartial freedom” is thrust upon him—as he is permitted “to enjoy equal rights” with the white man, or as ignorance and folly, in their blind and cruel kindness and exterminating goodness, strive to force him to manifest the nature and live the life of a different being. This assertion, doubtless, startles the reader, as it once certainly would have startled the writer himself. We are all so accustomed to mental habits directly in conflict with this assertion, that it is somewhat difficult to lift our minds out of them and to take true cognizance of the facts, and inductive facts, that daily confront us.

The negro _is_ a different being from the white man, and therefore, of necessity, was designed by the Almighty Creator to live a different life, and to disregard this—to shut our eyes and blindly beat our brains against the decree—the eternal purpose of God himself, and force this negro to live _our life_, necessarily destroys him, for surely human forces can not dominate or set aside those of Omnipotence. Nor is the negro the sole sufferer from this blind impiety, this audacious attempt to disregard the distinctions and to depart from the purposes of the Almighty Creator. The large “free” negro populations of Maryland and Virginia are the great drawbacks on their prosperity, and if the hundred thousand or so of these people were supplanted by the same number of white laborers, or, indeed, the same number of “slave” negroes, a wide and beneficent change would rapidly follow. Furthermore, they are vicious as well as idle and non-productive, and every one of them a disturbing force—a dangerous element—which, in conjunction with those hideous wretches maddened with a monstrous theory like those miscreants at Harper’s Ferry, are always liable to be made instruments of fearful mischief. The consequences of the fifty thousand “free” negroes in juxtaposition with the three millions of white people in New York are barely perceptible, but as scarcely one in fifty of these people are engaged in productive labor, they are a considerable burden upon the laboring and producing citizens. True, they do not see it or feel it—and multitudes of honest and laborious citizens in the rural districts are profoundly interested in the “cause of freedom,” while thus contributing a certain portion of each day’s labor for the support of some fifty thousand non-productive negroes. Again, in the cities and larger towns, the vices and immoralities of the whites have an extended association with this free negro element.

The negro in his normal condition has attractive qualities. He is not degraded, for none of God’s creatures are naturally degraded, and his fidelity and affection for his master and his master’s family, sometimes reach a dignity that would reflect honor on the white man. Nor is there any prejudice or hatred between the races when they are in true relation to each other. One may travel for months, perhaps years, in the South, and never witness a collision or the slightest disturbance between them; but, on the contrary, they will often see a kindly feeling displayed even when the negro is not owned by those who exhibit it. The negro is in a social position and relation that accords with his nature, his wants, the purposes that God has adapted him to, in short, lives out his own life, and therefore, all that is good, that is healthy in his moral nature as in his physical nature, is duly manifested. But at the North, where he is thrust from his natural sphere and forced to live out the life of a different being, he exhibits the same moral defects that he does in his physical nature. He is a social monstrosity—and though his subordinate nature renders him less likely to commit great crimes than the superior white man, the tendencies to petty immoralities are almost universal. Some, indeed, bred up in well-regulated families, and others who are nearly white, escape the general demoralization of this people, but the instances are probably few—the moral defects march hand in hand with the physical, and, as they tend continually to disease and death, so, too, do they tend to universal immorality. And as it would be strange, indeed, if Providence visited the sins of the dominant race on these poor creatures alone, they are extensively associated, as has been observed, with the vices of the whites. With feeble perceptions of moral obligations, with strong tendencies to animal indulgences of every kind, and an utter repugnance to productive labor, they congregate in the cities; and the social exclusion to which they are exposed, as well as the absence of moral sentiment among them, renders them, to a wide extent, the instruments of the vices and corruptions of the whites.

Thus, it is not alone the negro’s non-productiveness—the burden, the absolute tax imposed on the laboring classes—but the demoralization of this abnormal element, of this social monstrosity, that is inflicted on society as the legitimate and unavoidable punishment for having placed the negro in an abnormal condition. God created him a negro—a different and inferior being, and, therefore, designed him for a different and inferior social position. Society, or the State, has ignored the work of the Almighty, and declared that he should occupy the same position and live out the life of the white man; and the result is, the laboring and producing classes are burdened with his support, and society, to a certain extent, poisoned by his presence. To the negro it is death—necessarily death, as it always must be to all creatures, human or animal, forbidden to live the life God has blessed them with, or to live in accord with the conditions He has imposed on them. The ultimate doom of the poor creatures, therefore, is only a question of time. The great “anti-slavery” imposture of our times, which has rested on popular ignorance of a few fundamental truths in ethnology and political economy, has at last culminated, and few, if any more of these people will ever be turned loose, or manumitted as it has been called. Whether they will be restored to society and to usefulness at the North may be doubted, but necessity as well as humanity will doubtless prompt such a policy at the South; but, in any event, it is absolutely certain that, as a class, they will become extinct, and a hundred years hence it is reasonable to suppose that no such social monstrosity as a “free negro” will be found in America.

But another and far more embarrassing question is presented by free negroism outside of the American Union, and that now confronts us in Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, Mexico, and on the whole line of our Southern border. This is the danger, the sole danger of the so-called slavery question, and it involves possibilities that are fearful to think of, though scarcely dangerous at all if our own people were truly enlightened on the general subject.

In a previous chapter it has been shown how climatic and industrial laws govern our mixed populations, and, without the slightest interference of government, the negro element goes just where its own welfare as well as that of the white citizenship and the general interests of civilization demand its presence. This law of industrial adaptation has carried it from northern ports into the Central States, from the latter to the Border States, and is now, with even increased activity, carrying it from Virginia, etc., into the Gulf States, and thus permitted to go on, with all obstacles removed from the path of its progress, a time will come when the negro population of the New World will be within the centre of existence where it was created, and where the Almighty Creator has provided for its well-being. A sectional party in the North, taking advantage of popular ignorance, and actually enacting a law prohibiting it to exist anywhere where white labor is best adapted, could not by that sole act do any practical injury to the social order of the South. Such an act would indeed be a violation of the spirit of the federal compact, and, as an adjunct of the hostile policy of the foreign enemies of republican institutions, its moral bearings would be full of mischief; but, disconnected or disunited with the British free negro policy, it would be harmless, for, as Mr. Webster once declared, it would only be a “reënactment of the will of God.” But, as already observed, the danger of this whole question lies beyond the boundaries of the American Union, and if it be true that we have a considerable number in our midst disaffected to democratic institutions—then every man opposed to the existing condition, or so-called slavery, is, however ignorant of it, to a certain extent an instrument of the enemies of these institutions; and the policy of any such party, as well as the action of any among us, whether in concert with, or independently of any such party, for the same common object or end, becomes treason, and treason the most wicked and revolting that the mind can conceive of, for it involves the natural supremacy of the white man over the negro, as well as the permanence, peace, and prosperity of our republican system. The Spanish, still less the Portuguese conquerors of America, have never exhibited that healthy natural instinct which preserves the integrity of races, so universally as the Anglo-Americans have done. They have intermixed and amalgamated with the Indians or Aboriginals with little hesitation; and though they have always manifested a certain repugnance to an equality with the still more subordinate negro, they have largely intermixed, and therefore, extensively deteriorated and ruined themselves.

In Brazil there are nearly four millions of negroes that are called slaves, but held more by the bonds of pecuniary interest than they are by nature, as with us. There is a large mulatto and mongrel population, often highly educated, possessing vast wealth, with, of course, all the advantage? that these things give when society does not rest on natural distinctions. A mulatto or mongrel in Virginia or Mississippi may be left to take cure of himself, or be a so-called freeman, but he can never be a citizen—can never in any thing whatever be legally endowed with the social attributes, any more than he can with the natural attributes, of the white man. But in Brazil, and, indeed, in Cuba, the mulatto, mongrel, or negro may by law become a citizen, may own slaves, may, in short, be artificially invested with all the “rights” by the government that nature—that God himself has withheld or forbidden. The white man in Cuba is a slave to a foreign dominion, and this same foreign power, while it withholds from him his natural rights, forces the negro by the same arbitrary power into legal equality with him. The arbitrary force is less in Brazil, but the low grade of manhood in the white element, its extensive affiliation and consequent deterioration with the subject race, has rendered them incapable of either comprehending liberty or of enjoying free institutions. The negro that was a slave once becomes a citizen, with all the legal rights of the white man, and, if he inherits wealth, educates his children, etc., then these artificial and accidental things, instead of the distinctions of nature, become the line of demarcation in society. If a planter has a family of children by his negro slaves, and educates them and leaves them his wealth, then they become influential citizens, makers of the government, etc., and leaders of fashion, perhaps, in Rio Janeiro and other cities. The white man is so degraded, the instinct of race so perverted, the sense of superiority so obtuse—in short, the nature of the Caucasian so completely corrupted by extensive affiliations with the subject race, that natural distinctions are no longer a line of demarcation, and wealth, accident, etc., as in Europe, and as the Federalists once desired, are the basis of the political and social order. It is somewhat different in Cuba, for here the American instinct of race and the high appreciation of manhood common to all societies based on the order of nature have a certain influence. But even in Cuba, in our own neighborhood, within a few hours’ sail of our coast, society rests upon an artificial basis, and what is called slavery rather involves pecuniary considerations than a question of races.

The social condition, therefore, or so-called slavery may be overthrown any day in Brazil or Cuba, for, resting on a basis of property instead of the distinctions of nature common with us, there is no permanent security for the social safety, and in view of the policy of England on this subject and its influence in Brazil, we should not be surprised at any moment to hear that a revolution had broken out, and that slavery was overthrown in every portion of the Brazilian empire. This result which may happen at any moment, and which circumstances alone may protract for an indefinite period, would seem to be ultimately inevitable—for the white element is every day becoming more deteriorated and feeble; and, without the mental and moral power, without the healthy instinct of the race to buoy it up amid such corrupt and corrupting tendencies, without that high sense of manhood which makes the American “slaveholder” the perfect type and complete embodiment of the strength and power of the great master race of mankind, without, in short, the natural superiority of the white man to restrain this negro and mongrel population, it is certain sooner or later to escape from all legal restraint, and any hour the whole social fabric may collapse into utter and hopeless ruin. It will be well for Americans who desire to preserve American institutions and American civilization to heed this and ponder well on the uncertain and rotten foundations of social order in Brazil and Cuba, and which, already fatally undermined, may at any moment, as has been said, collapse into a huge mass of free negroism, and thus become a portion of that diseased, monstrous, and nameless condition which ignorance, and folly, and imposture, and hatred to American democracy have combined to pervert language as well as stultify reason and call freedom.

Elsewhere it has been shown that the negro isolated in Africa is in a natural condition, for he multiplies himself, but that he is in his normal, healthy, educated or civilized condition at the South, for he then multiplies with vastly greater rapidity than in a state of isolation, and consequently, _must_ be more in harmony with those fixed and eternal decrees that God has ordained for the government of all His creatures. It has also been shown that the negro abandoned and left to himself in Virginia, etc., dies out, but, of course, less rapidly than at the North where the notion prevails that he is the same being as themselves, and therefore, in their efforts to make him manifest the same qualities, or, in other words, to force on him the same “rights,” he rapidly tends to extinction. But there is still another phase of free negroism vastly more extended and more dangerous to republican institutions and the future civilization of America.

The negro is a creature of the tropics, and his labor is essential to the cultivation of tropical and tropicoid products, which, in turn, are essential to the happiness and well-being of all mankind. But, as has been shown, his _mental_ organism renders him incapable—as absolutely and inevitably as the _physical_ organism of the white man renders _him_ incapable of tropical production. In the brief space allowed in this work to the consideration of this vital and most momentous truth, the author could only present a few leading facts in its support, but these _facts_ are so overwhelming that no rational or honest mind in Christendom will venture to dispute the truth in question. Furthermore it may be stated without chance or possibility of historical contradiction, that in the entire experience of mankind no single instance has ever been known when the isolated negro or the labor of the white man has cultivated the soil or grown the products of the tropics. The mind of the white man and the body of the negro—the intellect of the most elevated and the industrial capacities of the most subordinate of all the known human races, therefore, constitute the elements and motive forces of tropical civilization. Every mind capable of reasoning at all will know that civilization is impossible without production, and production in the great tropical centre of our continent being forever absolutely and necessarily impossible without negro labor guided, controlled, and managed by the higher intelligence of the white man—it is therefore absolutely certain that the social relation which English writers have taught the world to regard as a condition of slavery, is simply that social adaptation of the industrial forces of the subordinate race, essential, not alone to their own welfare but to the welfare of all mankind, and without which there can no more exist what we call civilization in a large portion of America than there can be life without food or light without the sun. This is obvious, and indeed unavoidable to those who are in actual juxtaposition with negroes. But in Europe where there are white men only, and where negroes, Indians, Malays, etc., are in the popular imagination beings like themselves except in the complexion, and only need to be civilized, as they suppose, to be like others, it was an easy matter to excite a public feeling hostile to the prosperity of the people of the tropics. The theory, or rather dogma of a single race, that all mankind was a unit, and negroes, Indians, etc., had a common origin and common nature, and therefore common rights, had been set up by English writers during the conflict with the American colonies; and Dr. Johnson, with his usual coarseness of expression, had declared that “the Virginia slaveholders were the loudest yelpers for liberty”—thus, in utter unconsciousness, paying them a compliment when he believed he was inflicting a sarcasm of peculiar virulence.

The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence had reacted in Europe, and the French Revolution, which followed so closely on the American, threatened to overthrow the whole social fabric in the Old World and to reconstruct its governments on the basis of the great American idea promulgated by Jefferson. To counteract these tendencies, the English statesmen of the day sought to distract the attention of the people from their own wrongs to the fancied wrongs of the negro—and Wilberforce, Dr. Johnson, and other tory leaders and writers, originated that world-wide delusion and imposture which, in the name of freedom, has probably done more damage to freedom than all other influences combined, within the last seventy years. The assumption of a single race—that the negro was a _black_-white man, and therefore entitled to all the rights of white men, naturally attracted the attention and aroused the sympathies of the English masses, and when the supposed wrongs of the negro in America were contrasted with their own, the latter, doubtless, seemed utterly insignificant in comparison.

The English government, therefore, entered on an “anti-slavery” policy, which, beginning with the abrogation of the “slave trade” has continued ever since, and though it has impoverished, and, in fact, destroyed some of the finest provinces of the British empire, it is as avowed, defined, and energetic at this moment, perhaps even more so than at any other period since it was commenced. Mr. Calhoun and others have supposed that the so-called emancipation of negroes in the British West India Islands originated in a spirit of commercial rivalry, and in order to monopolize tropical production in their East Indian possessions that they were willing to sacrifice utterly their West Indian colonies. There can be no doubt that British statesmen universally believed that the example they were about to give us in this respect would be followed by universal “emancipation” in the United States, as, indeed, it has been followed by all the European governments owning American possessions. But while this was expected by every body in England, and thus far may be said to have been the prime motive of their action, it is not reasonable to assume that British statesmen were prompted by a spirit of commercial rivalry or believed for a moment that they were concocting a grand scheme for securing a monopoly of tropical products. The policy begun by Pitt forty years previous, naturally and necessarily culminated in the “emancipation” of 1832, though the desire to neutralize the popular excitement then prevailing in respect to parliamentary reform, doubtless hastened the action of the government. English statesmen may be unable, and probably are unable to explain the motives for their “anti-slavery” policy, but they never mistake or fail to recognize its vital importance to the preservation of their system. Democracy and aristocracy are necessarily antagonistic in all their tendencies, and the progress, strength, and extension of the former necessarily involve the downfall and destruction of the latter. And, as it is the South—the “slaveholders,” the States, and the people whose social life rests upon natural distinctions that have always struck the deadliest blows at the British system, and, as declared by the old tory, Dr. Johnson, eighty years ago, have been the warmest supporters of liberty, British statesmen, in their turn, desired to break down a condition thus dangerous and thus in conflict with their own.

Indeed, they can not avoid making war upon the social order of the South. It is a necessity that exists in the nature of things, and springs spontaneously from the circumstances that constitute the opposing conditions, and therefore, from 1776 to 1860 this warfare, openly or secretly, on the battle-field, or the still more dangerous arena of public opinion, has been uninterrupted. Their system is based on artificial distinctions—on things of human invention; ours on natural distinctions—those fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty; and so long as England is an American power her policy must be in conflict with our own. If it could ever be successful—if the twelve millions of negroes on this continent could ever be forced from their normal condition of subordination into a legal equality with the whites—then it is obvious democratic institutions would be rendered impracticable. A simple statement of the facts involved would seem to be sufficient to convince every American mind not corrupted by British opinions, that the British “anti-slavery” policy is part and parcel of the British system, and therefore must go on as it has gone on until it either overthrows our republican institutions, or England, and indeed all other European governments and European influences are driven from the New World. The _causes_ of West Indian “emancipation,” therefore, lie deeper and are far wider in their scope, and immeasurably more deadly in their consequences than any temporary schemes of commercial rivalry, as suggested by Mr. Calhoun, to monopolize tropical products.

They strike at the national life—at the heart of republicanism, at the fundamental principle that underlies our system, at the everlasting truth that all who belong to the race are created free and equal; and should it ever be successful, should our people ever become so corrupted in opinion, and so debauched in their instincts as to assent to the British “anti-slavery” policy and “abolish slavery”—distort and transform themselves into equality with negroes, then it could not be long before the forms as well as the spirit of republicanism would disappear from the New World, and whatever might happen in the course of centuries, all that Washington and Jefferson and the glorious spirits of 1776 labored for would be lost to mankind.

While British and monarchical writers, therefore, have labored to corrupt the nation at the heart—to delude the reason and debauch the instincts of our people—to teach them that the negro was a man like themselves, and that the instincts which God gave them for their guidance in these respects were unworthy prejudices—that to retain this inferior and different being in a subordinate social position corresponding with his wants and our own welfare was wrong—an evil, a sin—in short, “enslaving him”—while European writers and their dupes among us were thus at work corrupting the intellect of a great people, the British government have steadily labored to reduce their teachings to practice and to “abolish slavery” in all their American possessions. It has been estimated that something like five hundred millions of money have been expended within the last seventy years to carry out the British “anti-slavery” policy, to abolish the natural supremacy of the white man over the negro, to obliterate the distinctions fixed by the Almighty Creator, and equalize those _He_ has created unequal. This vast expenditure is wrung, of course, from the toil, and sweat, and misery of the English laboring classes, and to pay the annual interest on it every laborer in England is compelled to give a certain portion of every day’s toil, which is thus taken from the mouths of his children to carry on a policy at war with liberty in America, but which through the monstrous delusions of the day is represented to be the noblest philanthropy! An aristocracy, a class, a mere fraction of the people, have laid this enormous burden on their brethren, their own race—those whom God created their equals—in order to obliterate the distinctions by which the Almighty has separated white men and negroes; or, in other words, to preserve _their_ distinctions—those which they have invented, which separate themselves from their brethren, the British aristocracy have mortgaged the bodies and souls of unborn generations of their kind in an impious and fruitless effort to destroy the distinctions that separate races, and equalize white men and negroes in America. The interest for a single year on this enormous sum, this mighty burden laid on the working classes of England, expended on popular education, would doubtless react in a wide-spread revolution and the utter annihilation of those who, under the pretence of philanthropy, or of liberating negroes in America, have imposed these stupendous burdens on the people.

A few years since, an awful dispensation of Providence in a neighboring island swept away in a brief space of time something like three millions of people—but, if the annual interest paid on the debt contracted under pretence of benefiting negroes in America had been applied to the relief of the Irish, probably all or nearly all of these unfortunate white people might have been saved. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose that, if the money taken from Irish laborers within the last seventy years and expended for the assumed benefit of the negro had been applied to their relief during the famine in Ireland, few if any would have perished, and that awful calamity never would have disfigured the annals of mankind.

It is the practice of some ignorant and superficial people among us to glorify this stupendous misery inflicted on the ignorant and helpless of their own race under the pretence of benefiting the negro. If it had done so—if, instead of an almost equal mischief to the negro, it had done him a boundless good—the crime against their own helpless and miserable people—the poor, ignorant, overworked, and under-fed laboring millions of their own race—would still scarcely find its parallel in the history of human wrongs. But it inflicted a still greater crime on the white people of the islands for it has doomed them to extinction—not absorption by the negro blood, as already explained, but entire extinction—that result being simply a question of time. Such, briefly considered, are the causes and the results, so far as the dominant race are concerned, of the British “anti-slavery” policy, which, beginning in the latter part of the last century, has been steadily and vigorously persisted in, and is, probably, in the face of all its failures in respect to its avowed objects, more energetic and active at this moment than ever before. All the islands are now, whether owned by England or other European powers, substantially turned over to the negro. The governments are simply means for working out this ultimate result. England, for example, sends out to Jamaica a governor, secretary, and a few other officials, perhaps to carry on the government of that island. The governor probably selects his council from the white element, for the reason that the intelligence of the negro is incompetent to the functions attached, and in respect to the more important official positions generally, they are, from the same cause, filled by white men, or by those of predominating white blood. But the policy of the government is to place power in the hands of the blacks, and therefore all the subordinate official positions are filled by these people, as, indeed, all the higher and more important places would be if there was sufficient intelligence to perform the functions properly.

A foreign power—an aristocracy of the Old World—employs a machinery, a contrivance, or thing called a government, to exterminate the white population in these islands, and to turn them over to the rule of the negro. Under the English system, political or official position, unlike ours, carries with it social importance, and a negro who is a member of the legislature or a magistrate in Jamaica is elevated, in a social sense, above the white who holds no official position, no matter what his claims may be in other respects. With the same legal and political rights, the same schools, and with largely predominating numbers, and most of the official positions in their hands, which, under the British system always gives social importance, the whole operation of the government is employed to elevate the negro in the social scale, and to depress the white man. Of course, intermarriage or affiliation—that hideous admixture of the blood of different races which God has eternally forbidden, and so fearfully punishes with extinction—is a direct and necessary consequence of this governmental policy.

A short time since the Queen of England knighted a negro, and as this factitious elevation placed him in a social position, quite above the untitled white man of Jamaica, the white woman of fashion would, doubtless, smother the instincts God gave for her guidance, and desecrate her womanhood by an alliance with this creature whom God made inferior, but whom a woman, four thousand miles distant, was pleased to make her equal. The government, therefore—all the governments of the British Islands, and, indeed of all other European powers, are simply instruments that are employed to elevate the negro and to depress the white man to a common level, to equalize races, to obliterate distinctions fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty, and make the negro the equal of the white man. It is no negative or _laissez faire_ policy—no neutral or indifferent desire to apply a theory and leave it to work itself out—no mere abstract declaration that all are equal, and therefore should be left free to ascend or descend in the social scale according to their merits; but, on the contrary, the government is an active and all-potent machinery, in constant operation to _force_ the negro up, and the white man down, to a common level. And it is probable that people in England look upon this policy as just and proper. The negroes largely predominate in number—why should they not have most of the offices? They have been wronged and oppressed, and are without education, and therefore the higher places must be filled by white men; but why should not they enjoy all the places they are fit for? Such, doubtless, is the notion of those in Europe, who, utterly ignorant of the negro, suppose him a man like themselves, except in his color. But human ignorance and impiety can not change His eternal decrees or alter the works of the Almighty. A middle-aged, respectable woman in England may “Knight” a negro, and declare that _she_ thus makes him superior to the common throng of white men, but the black skin, and woolly hair, and flat nose, and gross organism, and semi-animal instinct, fixed by the hand of the Eternal, remains just the same, unaltered and unalterable forever. All that is possible with the middle-aged woman in question, and those who surround her, is to corrupt, to debauch, to destroy, to exterminate, to murder their own blood, to doom the white people of those islands to a fate more horrible than the universal slaughter that swept away the whites of San Domingo. The process of extinction now rapidly destroying the white population of these islands has been already considered, but it may be stated again in this place, for it involves such tremendous consequences that it should be shouted in the ears of the world with the voice of an earthquake. The legal and political equality of the negro necessarily carries after it social equality wherever they predominate in numbers, and when there are no social distinctions of race or blood recognized, when that instinct which God has given us to protect the integrity of the organism, is debauched and trampled under foot—when, in short, the “prejudice against color” is lost, then such depraved creatures do not hesitate to form those hideous alliances that generate mulatto offspring. And when the whole force of government is brought to bear against the “prejudice” that revolts at social equality—the hideous affiliation, the monstrous admixture of blood, the vile obscenity that they may term marriage, follows with equal certainty. But the result of this admixture—the wretched progeny—the diseased and sterile offspring—has a determinate limit, and it is solely a question of time when it becomes wholly extinct. Any one reflecting a moment on this subject—that is, any American whose instincts are healthy and true—would surely prefer that his offspring should perish from the earth rather than to mix their blood with that of the negro; and as the white blood in Jamaica, etc., is rapidly mixing with the negro, and without foreign addition to the white element it must soon be universally tainted with the base alloy; and as all mongrels must of necessity ultimately perish, it is certain that the fate of the white people of these islands is vastly more deplorable than was that of those suddenly swept from existence in the Island of Hayti.

The policy of England in this respect is universally adopted in the other islands. The first step was a war upon the “slave trade”—then “emancipation,” then the active employment of the government to enforce the theory of a single race by forcing the negro up and the white man down to an abhorrent, but, of course, impossible level; for those they have transformed into a hideous kind of equality must finally perish, and in the whole tropical centre of the continent, ultimately become extinct. Meanwhile labor, production, and civilization are tending to the same common extinction with the white blood. In Jamaica, Barbadoes, and some other islands where there is yet a considerable white population, the negro, despite the influence of the government, is kept in a certain restraint. He labors little, it is true, but with little patches of land he grows bananas and other products that in that genial clime enable him to live in a certain comfort (to him), and thus—while the same being would rapidly perish in Massachusetts—to multiply himself. The horrible traffic in Mongols or coolies, since the negro was released from labor in the islands, has enabled the owners of some of the former flourishing plantations to continue their cultivation, and to furnish in some places almost their former products, and thus to deceive the world and to delude those who desire to be deluded in respect to the non-productiveness of the free negro.

But, as has been shown, the negro neither does nor can labor, in our sense of the word. His dominating sensualism forbids such a thing, while his limited intellect, like that of the child, renders him unable to labor for a remote result, or deny himself immediate indulgence, in order to acquire an ultimate good. In his natural state, and isolated from the white man, he calls into exercise his powerful senses for his immediate wants, and with no winter or barren seasons to contend against, and favored with a soil with its many and nutritious fruits growing spontaneously all about him, he has little more to do than to pluck and eat. In this way he lives, multiplies himself, and enjoys an animal existence, which to us seems miserable enough certainly, and, in comparison with his condition at the South, is indeed miserable enough; but to this he is rapidly tending in the West Indian Islands, and the whole power of the British and other European governments are rapidly forcing him into this condition.

In Hayti he is now nearing this final condition—this inherent and original Africanism to which he is tending in the whole of tropical America. Seventy years ago the mulattoes rebelled against the whites; they excited and impelled the negroes to join them; the whites—only twenty-five thousand—were immolated or driven from the island. Then came the conflict among themselves; the mulattoes and mongrels in turn were massacred, or sought shelter in San Domingo, the Spanish part of the island, and the negroes, masters of the field, with their natural tendencies unchecked, without guides or masters, have finally culminated in _Solouque_—a typical negro—a serpent worshipper and _Obi-man_, as chief or emperor.

When the French expedition, under the command of General Le Clerc, failed to recover the island in 1803, and the Haytians, though their independence was not recognized by the French republic, were able, through the aid of the British, to assume the position of an independent power, they commenced a national existence peculiarly favored in many respects. The mulattoes—generally the children of French masters—were many of them highly educated, having been sent to Paris for this purpose in childhood. They had the sympathy of the French people, and indeed of the whole world on their side, for the worst tyrants and oppressors of Europe, while laboring with all their might to crush out the liberty of white men, were then as now deeply interested in the freedom of the black. Moreover, they had the physical as well as the moral support of England, and without a single enemy in the world to embarrass their progress. But though without foreign enemies or wars of any kind to check their advance, with the finest climate and most fertile soil in the world, they have rapidly collapsed into their natural Africanism.

Internal commotions, as now in Mexico, began at once among the mongrels, and bloodshed and misery of every kind prevailed until this element was necessarily destroyed, and the stolid, idle, and useless savagism of Africa became the essential characteristic of these people. Two causes alone have held in check the tendencies to Africanism—the white blood and the surrounding civilization. The mongrel element, though constantly diminishing in numbers, naturally governed, until it became so feeble that _Solouque_, a typical negro and an embodiment of Africanism, of fetichism, and a worshiper of Obi, seized the supreme power and inaugurated savagism. Accident of some kind or other has recently pushed this worthy aside and placed one _Jeffrard_, a _griffe_, or “colored man,” or mulatto, in power, who calls himself president, but he will doubtless soon give place to some negro chief. Nevertheless, there is a considerable infusion of white blood still in Hayti, and therefore, the true negro condition—the natural condition when isolated, the condition it has always been in and that it always must remain in when isolated from the Caucasian man—is not yet entirely restored. Again, the surrounding civilization—the contact with Europeans and Americans that commerce or trade in fruits growing almost spontaneously together, with the few adventurous spirits always attracted to such a fertile soil as Hayti would, perhaps, always give to its people a somewhat different external character from the African type.

But if we can be permitted to suppose the absence of these things—the utter extinction of the Caucasian innervation and absolute isolation of the negro as in Africa—then, in the tropics, the same climate with similar soils, in short, similar circumstances to those surrounding him in Africa, of course, the negro type, the negro nature, the negro being, would be the same as it always has been and is now in Africa. On the coast, where he is brought in contact with the white man, where there are a good many with white blood in their veins, who therefore retain to some extent the habitudes of the superior race, the traditions and historic recollections of their former masters are preserved. But in the interior, where the negro is permitted to live out his African tendencies, he has lost all knowledge of the events of seventy years ago. History, religion, even the French language has disappeared, and in their place there is Obiism and African dialects, while probably not one in a thousand has any perception, knowledge, or recollection whatever of _Christophe_, _Dessalines_, or others of those notorious chiefs who a little over half a century since filled the island with the terror of their names. As observed, the utter extinction of the Caucasian innervation and absolute isolation of the negro in Hayti, would of necessity end in complete Africanism, and to this end, this final culmination of savagism the whole British and European policy is now necessarily tending. It is true, the existence of a white government by mere juxtaposition as well as the prestige of power, holds in check the strong tendencies to Africanism, but the policy—the official employment of negroes always carrying with it under the monarchical _regime_ social importance—tends powerfully to degrade the white blood and induce amalgamation, to drag after it, of course, that inevitable extinction of the mongrel progeny which the Almighty has decreed forever and everywhere.

Thus, the British “anti-slavery” policy tends rapidly and constantly to the restoration of Africanism, to savagery—to the building up of a mighty barbarism in the very heart of the American continent—to the establishment of a huge heathenism that shall spread itself over fifty degrees of the most fertile and beautiful portion of the New World. This, then, is the legitimate termination of that wide-spread delusion of modern times, which has drawn into its fatal and monstrous embrace multitudes of honest and well-meaning men, and while it already has worked out evils so stupendous as to be almost beyond our powers of computation to measure them, and never in an instance, direct or indirect, done the slightest good whatever, at this moment it threatens to inflict even greater evils on the world than those it has hitherto cursed it with. The process through which all this mischief is worked out can not or need not be mistaken—a man may run and read it, and though a fool understand it. It is this: 1st. The dogma of a single race—that the negro is a _black_-white man. 2d. The “anti-slavery” policy of Pitt, nominally to put down the “slave trade.” 3d. “Emancipation”—and whites and negroes declared equal. 4th. The policy of European governments to elevate negroes and depress whites, inducing social equality and consequent amalgamation. 5th. Absorption of the white blood by mongrelism. 6th. Sterility and extinction of the mixed element. 7th. Restoration of the African type and consequent savagism—a huge heathenism—indeed, Africa itself literally lifted up and planted down in the center of the New World—thus erecting a mighty barbarism directly in the path of American civilization; and which, in all coming time, as the ally or instrument of European monarchists, shall beat back the waves of democracy, and dwarf the growth and limit the power of the American Republic.

The “free negro” in our midst perishes; but in the tropics, in his own climate, he poisons and destroys the white blood, and then relapses into his inherent and organic Africanism, toward which he is rapidly impelled by the British “anti-slavery policy.” If that policy could ever be successful—if fifty degrees of latitude in the heart of this continent should ever be permanently turned over to free negroism, or ever occupied by a huge barbarism—which should not alone render the fairest portion of the New World a barren waste, but interrupt that great law of progress which impels us onward, to carry our system, our republican idea of government, and our civilization, over the whole “boundless continent,” then, indeed, might the friends of freedom despair of the future. But it is not possible that the rising civilization of America is to be thus broken down by the monarchists of the Old World. The law of progress—of national growth, of very necessity—that has carried us to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Pacific Ocean, will continue to impel us onward, and to restore the rapidly perishing civilization of the great tropical center of the continent. All humane and good men desire that this grand result shall be worked out by moral causes, by the exposure of the monstrous delusion in regard to negroes that has been productive of so much evil; but either through an appeal to reason or to the sword—through the operation of natural causes or through bloodshed and national suffering—the final end _must be_ the restoration of the negro to his normal condition, and consequent restoration of civilization in the finest portion of our great continent.