chiefs on the other, and teaching them to work as free men with the white man, great things may be achieved by these large populations in a vast country of great capabilities. The proof that South Africa has capacities is, that colonists can now afford to pay wages which seem much to exceed those paid in America. We may well hope that if they obtain a very large supply of the labour of humanised natives great prosperity may ensue and industry may be immensely developed, without any of those compulsory and unfair methods to which whites lording it over coloured races have sometimes been tempted to resort. I am sure no one can compare the present state of these African populations under their own tribal system with that of civilised Africans in America without feeling that such a change would be immensely beneficial to the native races of South Africa.

From a selfish point of view I think we might especially look to such a consummation as beneficial to this country, because we have a very large and increasing class for whom it is becoming more and more difficult to provide: I mean the educated classes, somewhat above mere manual labour. I have said that I do not think America the country for that class there I put it that the only farmer sure to succeed is he who holds the plough himself. After the early days of successful squatting have passed I suspect that most of our temperate colonies approximate to a similar condition. It would be very desirable that there should be somewhere a field for the

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.

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 specialinterest 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 system 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 emancipated 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.

The first and most difficult question is the capacity of the negro as compared with other races. In 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