For much that was done in troubled times, and much that has been done since (to which I shall come presently), the excuse is, that the Carpet-bag rule was so utterly detestable, wicked, and impossible that it was an absolute necessity to get rid of it by fair means or foul. I have, then, sought to learn what were the terrible things suffered under this rule. There seems to be a general agreement that very great abuses did exist under it, and before I went South I certainly expected to find that the Southern States had been for a time a sort of Pandemonium in which a white man could hardly live. Yet it certainly was not so. I have said that the Republican State Governments made no attack on the rights of property, and I have been able to discuss the whole labour and land question without having occasion to allude to political events as a very disturbing influence. It is in truth marvellous how well the parties to industrial questions were able to settle them while there was so great political unsettlement. When I went to South Carolina I thought that there at least I must find great social disturbances; and in South Carolina I went to the county of Beaufort, the blackest part of the State in point of population, and that in which black rule has been most complete and has lasted longest. It has the reputation of being a sort of black paradise, and, per contra, I rather expected a sort of white hell. There I thought I should see a rough Liberia, where the blacks ruled roughshod over the whites. To my great surprise I found exactly the contrary. At no place that I have seen are the

relations of the two races better and more peaceable. It is true that many of the whites have suffered very greatly from the war, and from the tax-sales by United States authority to which I have before alluded, and I am afraid that there are numerous cases of poverty and sad reverse of fortune among them; but that comes of the war which is past. Those whose fortunes or professions have in any degree survived have nothing serious to complain of. The town of Beaufort is a favourite summer resort for white families from the interior. All the best houses are in the occupation of the whites almost all the trades, professions, and leading occupations. White girls go about as freely and pleasantly as if no black had ever been in power. Here the blacks still control the elections and send their representatives to the State Assembly; but though they elect to the county and municipal offices they by no means elect blacks only. Many whites hold office, and I heard no complaint of colour difficulties in the local administration. The country about is partly the land on which black proprietor-farmers have been settled, with white traders, teachers, &c., in the successful manner which I have already described ; partly similar lands of white proprietors who let them out and manage amicably with a black tenantry; partly rice plantations, which, on account of the works of protection and irrigation required, are worked in large farms by hired labour; partly the land and water in which the phosphates before alluded to are found; partly forest and sandhills; but

whatever the tenures and circumstances, I say em phatically that nowhere are the relations between blacks and whites better, and nowhere does a traveller see fewer signs that political difficulties have been fatal to settlement

'Well, then,' I have gone on to ask, 'did the black Legislatures make bad laws?' My informants could not say that they did. In truth, though many of the Carpet-baggers were in some sense the scum of the Northern armies, the leading spirits among them seem to have been men of decided education and ability, and the work done under their direction, and a good deal adapted from Northern models, is not at all below the average of American State legislation. What, then, is the practical evil of which complaint is made? The answer is summed up in the one word corruption.' It is alleged that under Carpetbag rule the most monstrous and inconceivable corruption was all but universal, and that not only were the available public funds made away with, but the States were burdened with terrible debts by those who pretended to represent them, so as to have brought them to the brink of insolvency. I believe there can be no doubt at all that a great deal of corruption did prevail-much more than the ordinary measure of American corruption; it was inevitable that it should be so under the circumstances, but to what degree it was so, it is very difficult to tell. The fact is there is no denying that corruption does to some degree exist in American politics, and is not confined to the South. If we are to believe the

common language of Americans themselves, and have regard to their opinions of the motives and character of 'politicians,' their every-day accusations, and the staple of their caricatures and farces, this corruption must be very widespread indeed. On the other hand, I am inclined to suppose that such accusations are the ordinary form of throwing dirt at any man who is in disgrace, and that while some are true a good many are not well-founded. Of course I am not qualified to speak with any confidence, but the general impression I have brought away is, that, as the leading men in America seem to be constantly oscillating between high political office and the management of railways, life insurance companies, and other joint-stock undertakings, many of them have carried into politics what I may call joint-stock morals, and are no better and no worse than our own directors. All the Carpet-bag Governors are, as a matter of course, accused of the grossest personal corruption; and as soon as they fall from power it is almost a necessity that they should fly from criminal prosecutions instituted in the local courts under circumstances which give little security for a fair trial. Several Democrats of high position in Georgia have assured me they believe that the Northern gentleman of good antecedents, who was Governor there, was innocent of the things of which he was accused; in fact, I believe he came back, stood his trial, and was acquitted. In South Carolina I was given the report of the Committee of Investigation disclosing terrible things, and said to be most

impartial and conclusive. The general result was to leave on one's mind the belief that undoubtedly a very great deal of pilfering and corruption had gone on, but the tone of the report was far too much that of an indictment, rather than of a judgment, to satisfy me that it could be safely accepted in block. The Governor of Massachusetts has refused to render up the ex-Governor, who asserts his innocence and his readiness to stand his trial if a fair trial be assured. As regards the State debts, I believe those shown to be fraudulent and unjustifiable have been repudiated long ago; and the Southern States having also had the advantage of writing off all debts incurred during the war, I understand that by far the greater portion of their existing debts were incurred before the war. The debts which Virginia and North Carolina find it necessary to adjust ' were, I am told, very largely incurred for somewhat reckless subventions to railways and other public works. But the railways at any rate exist, and are the making of the country. In South Carolina the whole debt is not large-only, I think, about one and a half millions sterling, all told.

On the whole, then, I am inclined to believe that the period of Carpet-bag rule was rather a scandal than a very permanent injury. The black men used their victory with moderation, although the women were sometimes dangerous, and there was more pilfering than plunder on a scale permanently to cripple the State.

To return to the history of South Carolina. After