has existed uniform and undeviating in the course of four thousand years must have been so from the beginning, and have proceeded from the hand of the Great Creator. If the Negro in this long time, these past ages, has preserved his integrity, and transmitted to each succeeding generation the exact and complete type of himself, we must suppose that thus he existed in the anteriour period and that thus he will continue in future time-specifically and hopelessly inferiour to the white man.

2. The Religious Argument. But after all that science has. demonstrated on this subject, we have a certain Biblical argument, which it has become recently fashionable to interpose as against the doctrine of distinct races, and which has frequently silenced discussion by a dogma as arrogant in tone as it is puerile in character. It is said that the inspired narration in the book of Genesis, showing all men descended from a single pair in the garden of Eden, secures the doctrine of the unity of races, and that it is forbidden and impious for science to allege to the contrary. This argument may be dispatched by a single consideration. Even if we are to accept the story in Genesis as literally and scientifically correct, it does not

is very important, as it silences the advocates of Negro equality on either of the two suppositions which the case admits.

Such discoveries as those of Champollion, at least, furnish the visible evidence of a permanence in the variety of the Negro, which, if it does not render naturally and absolutely impossible the doctrine of his equality with the white man, yet postpones it to a period beyond all reasonable calculation in human legislation, and makes it a mere phantom of the imagination. Four thousand years look down upon Congress! In all that time the Negro, whether a "species" or a "variety," has been marked, as he is to-day, an inferiour man; and that, after forty centuries, in which the integrity of the type has been faithfully preserved, it is to be instantly and radically changed, and the Negro make a sudden apparition as the equal and rival of the Caucasian, is rather too much for any human credulity. The interval is too vast, the "variety" too "permanent" for any effect of equality within any appreciable time; it is an indefinite, if not an infinite progression, ad astra, beyond the reach of mortal calculation.

exclude the possibility or even probability that God may not have thereafter worked a miracle-as He did at Babel in the division of tongues-and have separated the races of men as well by different natures as by different tongues and impossible distances. Every sincere believer in Christianity is estopped from denying the supposition of such a miracle. The whole Christian religion is founded on miracles; they are a machinery which the true believer admits on even slight occasions-why not then in this great matter of the Divine economy ? If it be contended that God at any time might not establish the distinction of races, we limit His power and insult His majesty; and no less crime of impiety than this is committed by those who insist, that the Almighty Creator could have regulated this matter of races at no other time than on "the seventh day" of creation, and in no other place than in the garden of Eden. But the argument is not worth pursuit; it runs at last into derogation of the Divine Power; and we are satisfied to believe that, if as science and all human arguments lead us to suppose, the creature Man has been divided into different races, it was so by the will of the Almighty without any limitations of time and place within which to perform the greatest or the least of His works.

3. The Historic Argument. The little we know of the Negro historically is fatal to his claim of similar nature and possible equality with the white man. We find him in all known records of the world incapable of improvement, alien to progress, an incorrigible straggler from the march of civilization; if we may except what improvement he has obtained from the condition of so called slavery in America, where his special endowment of the imitative faculty has been called and con

strained into unusual exercise by virtue of his inferiour posi tion. But apart from this exceptional and limited civilization he has obtained from the contact of a white master, which grows out of the narrow faculty of imitation, and exists only within the boundaries of a certain association, the Negro remains in Africa a stationary barbarian, or exists in other countries, a hopeless retrograde. For four thousand years he has remained within the prison-house of African barbarism; and although great empires have been planted upon his borders and the foci of enlightenment have been erected around him -although countless myriads of white men have lived and died on the soil of Africa, and vast populations and entire nations have emigrated to that continent with the lights of civilization-the Negro has never yet been permanently affected by the contact, and the light that has shone upon his condition has only made the darkness more visible. The noble civilization in the valley of the Nile, which followed the Christian era, and at one time boasted forty thousand inmates of religious houses within its boundaries, has perished and left not a trace upon the Negro who lived in view of its splendid structures and came within the influences of its religious missions. So, too, the modern experiment of Liberia has utterly failed in its mission of civilization, and, by the candid confessions of those who have made sincere and unwearied contributions to it, has only succeeded in putting out a picket line of trading posts on the borders of a hostile and repellant barbarism. The Negro within the Tropical dominion remains what he was many centuries ago; implacable to the advances of civilization, or susceptible only to the vices which follow in its train. As long as he has been known to history, he has performed no part in it. He is incapable of transmitting knowledge; he has never

invented an alphabet, or even a system of numerals; he is invariably found without any rudiments of cultivation originated by himself, and therefore essays without effect the higher stages of progress. Civilization finds no foundation to work upon in him; and what he obtains, even temporarily or in the slightest degree from its contact, is empirical and perishes with the surrounding circumstances.

A condition, such as this, must rest on permanent and welldefined causes. It fitly completes and closes the evidence of the specific, permanent, irrevocable inferiourity of the Negro -an inferiourity capable, it is true, of a degree of advance and developement in exceptional circumstances (as in the condition of servitude and its tendency to copy), but otherwise and ultimately hopeless, the only possible margin of improvement existing within limits fixed and determinate, beyond which the Negro can no more progress than he can alter the colour of his skin or the form of his brain.

The value of this fact-which we shall take as proved by the summary of arguments above-we have already referred to. So far from being a barren speculation, we repeat, it involves some of the most important problems of politics and society. It establishes the true status of the Negro; it decides his proper relations to the white man; it determines the measure of his limited improvement or comparative civilization; it indicates the proper schools of that civilization. So far from being offensive to humanity, it solicits for the Negro the truest philanthropy, the most intelligent and effective kindness; for the recognition of his inferiourity does not diminish, but multiplies his claims on an intelligent benevolence, and would take him from a false condition to put him in the place that fits his nature, suits his qualities, and therefore consults his happiness.

IV.

THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH

CONDITION AND TEMPER OF THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE.

The black thread of the Negro in the web of party-Division of the Anti-Slavery party into Abolitionists and Negrophilists-Union of these two parties in ReconstructionA new and enlarged edition of the "Irrepressible Conflict"-The proposition of Negro Suffrage scouted in the North-Elections of 1867 in Ohio, Minnesota, Kansas and New Jersey-The homogeneousness and political identity of the nation risked by the Negro-A curious comparison by B. F. Butler between the Negro and an unfortunate beast-The ballot, a fatal gift for the Negro-The "school" of SlaveryExtravagant tribute of the Republican party to the beneficence of Slavery-The Negro obtained his maximum of civilization as a slave-Temper of the Southern people on Negro suffrage-The theatrical machinery of "the League"-Solidity of the Negro organizations in the South-The elections of 1867 in Virginia A war of races imminent-The prayer of the South for peace-Interesting statement of Ex-Governor Perry of South Carolina--The feeling of desperation in the SouthDanger of another and peculiar rebellion there-The recent farce of RestorationThe lesson of Fenianism-A warning, and not a threat, to the North.

The black thread of the Negro has been spun throughout the scheme of Reconstruction. A design is betrayed to give to him the political control of the South; not so much as a benefit to him, not so much out of solicitude for him—for a solicitude so large and disproportionate would be curious-as to secure power to the Republican party in the North, and to open new issues for it, since what was supposed to be its