slavery tendencies of some of your public men and leading journals, and the apostasy of many Englishmen from the anti-slavery faith of their fathers, together with his uniform kindness of heart and warmth of Christian fellowship, have won for his mission, and for the England which that represents, the respect and confidence of a wide circle of Christians in America. It is due, also, to Dr. Massie to say that he has borne himself everywhere as a true Englishman; that he has spoken no word here that will not bear to be published at home; that he has been particularly careful not to compromise his constituents by his individual opinions, and not to mingle the object of his mission with any minor political, ecclesiastical, or reformatory measures, or with any partisan characters among ourselves. Having heard him upon several occasions, I can truly say that no one could have carried himself with more dignity, prudence, suavity, and integrity than has this ambassador of the Manchester Conference.

"On last Sabbath evening a farewell service for Dr. Massie was held at the Broadway Tabernacle Church, in which several ministers of different denominations participated. This is the largest church edifice in the city, with the exception of St. George's (Rev. Dr. Tyng's), and every nook and cranny of the building was occupied. Hundreds went away unable to gain admittance, and hundreds stood patiently in the aisles and the vestibule throughout a service of three hours. The tone of the meeting for liberty to mankind, for fraternity with England, for fellowship with all good and true men in Christ's work, would have warmed and cheered your hearts. I queried whether so respectful, so cordial, so sympathetic a hearing would have been accorded to an American speaking freely of our affairs in your Congregational Union as was there accorded to Dr. Massie, in spite of piratical British cruisers and British rebel rams. As the proceedings of this meeting will soon be published in pamphlet form, I forbear any detailed report."

CHAPTER VII.

THE COLOURED PEOPLE-PREJUDICES AGAINST COLOUR IN THE NORTH-RIOTS IN NEW YORK, JULY, 1863.

WE have here a subject replete with interest to the philosophical and philanthropic statesman or scholar. International polity and physiology are alike concerned in the practical conclusion. The sympathies and rights, divinely bestowed on the negro as on every child of the human family, are equally embraced. When I first proposed to myself the heading of this chapter, all that it involves did not present itself. The international destiny, the reproduction and final habitans of this people, often recurred in my converse with Americans; and I am not prepared yet to dismiss the inquiry, as if I had settled the problem. In the Northern States there has been a strong prejudice against people of colour. There still remains a lingering, though I hope diminishing, sympathy with that prejudice. In England, the prejudice is as strong. Except where slavery presents to the coloured person licentious allurements and facilities, or a temptation to claim kindred with the dominant race, there may be an equal repugnance to the pale-faced alliance in pure coloured people. It is not probable that the one will ever absorb the other, and it is not in Christianity or ethics to desire a war of races for the utter extinction of one of them. There are more coloured people than palefaces on the earth, and the lands where coloured nations are aboriginal are more adapted to their constitution and habits than to other tribes. Northern

latitudes and colder regions, whether for labour or for health, are less congenial and desired to those of fleecy hair and dark complexion.

Four hundred thousand, perhaps, may have been acclimatized in the free states, but the families of these free coloured people do not perceptibly increase. The adults do not reach an old age generally, and their offspring often suffer from bronchial diseases, from phthisis and scrofula. They are attached to the North because it is a free soil, not because they find its climate genial. Yet would it be a violation of human rights were the legislatures of these states to decree for them involuntary exile, or, as has been done by some of them, to disfranchise and brand them with any discriminating disqualification. The feeling of persecution, because of a law of their Creator, should not be engendered in the white man's breast, nor suggested in the coloured man's experience. It is well, therefore, that the colonization theory, proposed in President Lincoln's former Message, has not further been agitated, or revived for consideration.

Besides those hundreds of thousands who were free coloured, of whom we have spoken, there are the four millions who have been slaves, and whose birthplaces have been in the South. Few, indeed, of those living, now know any other land. They cannot be transported. Their progeny every year, in life statistics, should be sixty thousand. One hundred and twenty ship loads for transport every year! leaving the four millions behind. But the coloured race is necessary in the South, not as slaves, though they may prove free labourers. For the past two hundred years they have been the productive force. There is no other element prepared to take their place, and were it possible to abstract it from the country, it would only add poverty and ruin to the community. In other lands the scheme was tried to remove obnoxious labourers, and

IS COLOUR A CAUSE OF INFERIORITY?

311 the exiled carried the wealth of labour to other lands, and left ruin behind them, as when the Moors were driven from Castile, and the Huguenots were murdered or banished from France. The native born coloured people are needed in the South, and natural laws over-ride all temporary expedients. They have done the work even by a vicious system, they can do it much better by a healthy and natural organization; and, therefore, the power of an economic necessity will enforce their permanent settlement as freemen.

Does the fact of colour and constitutional congeniality with a warm atmosphere, include the inferiority of the race and its impossibility of ever living on an equality with the white? Would it suffice as answer for the African negro, or the Southern brahmin, to reason from similar premises vice versa? An eloquent writer from Delaware has concluded that it is "impossible that the two races can ever abide on that continent on terms of equality." He says this without meaning to be an enemy to the negro. He does not press emigration, and yet his America is not to be the ultimate home of the coloured race. They are to go out from it. He finds something in the character of the African race, which "perhaps" renders this probable. His idea is that "in the strange workings of Divine Providence this race has in a marvellous manner been brought to this land (America), and put under a tutelage for a great future; and that Africa, its home, may become the recipient of blessings, the foundation and preparation for which were made in this country." He pursues a parallel in the Egyptian bondage of Israel, and the American bondage of the negro, the destiny of Israel and the negro. He explores Africa and finds many lands of promise there, and spheres of Christian enterprise in which the American negro is to engage. I think it is possible that there may be work of this kind for hundreds, or even a thousand, but other

thousands will rise in their stead. I am more attracted by his generous defence of the negro characteristics as they may be developed in a state of freedom, which is herewith presented somewhat abridged.

"The world has always seen the African race in its lowest form. This seems true as far back as Egyptian monumental times. One is struck, when looking at copies of ancient hieroglyphics, with the degraded type of negro feature which always appears when these captive people are delineated. The African race seems under human policy to have been fated to be always represented by a slave, and, as was inevitable, it has been judged by the example seen. But the researches of travellers have of late compelled us to reverse many, if not all these conceptions. Africa gives us, indeed, perhaps the lowest types of humanity in the Bushman or Hottentot, yet the explorations of travellers have also shown these are not the true and normal examples of the African stock. It can readily be seen that wherever the African character is measured by the standard of an African slave, the judgment must necessarily be an erroneous one. The best tribes are not, in the nature of things, those out of which slaves are made. War and conquest are the fruitful sources of slavery! But the abler tribes are the warriors and the conquerors, while the weaker and the lower are the captives. Thus at the outset the slave declares by the fact of his servitude his inferiority of lineage. To this we are also to add the pretty wellknown fact that the poorest of these captives are those who come into the hands of the slave-dealer on the coast, while the better made and the more intelligent are reserved for the service of their captors. Thus, with this further reduction, you have in the African as he comes to the slaveship the lowest specimen of an inferior type of his people. But just these have been the exponents of the African race, and it is not only not surprising, but entirely natural that a false estimate should have been made of the whole negro family.

"What we would infer, the explorations of recent travellers show to be actually the case. We might refer to the Kaffirs in the south, close upon the regions where the Hottentot is found, a race of stalwart and noble men, who