many Negroes are clamoring to be exported to Africa. I live among the Negroes, and to my oft-repeated question as to whether they would be willing to go, I have not as yet gotten from one intelligent Negro an affirmative answer.

It would seem to me that the non-partisan statement of the Educational Bureau of the United States would be sufficient evidence to do away with the question of massing the Negroes either in foreign colonization or in domestic statehood. Says the able Commissioner: "In educational and in industrial progress this race has accomplished more than it could have achieved if settled in different environments without the aid of the whites. The Negro has needed the experience as well as the aid of the white man. In sections where the colored race has been massed and removed from contact with the whites, the progress of the Negro has been retarded. He is an imitative being, and has a constant desire to attempt whatever he sees the white man do. He believes in the education of his children, because he can see that an increase of knowledge will enable them to better their condition. The Bureau shows that in States where the colored population is highest in proportion to the total population, or where such population is massed in the Black Belt,' as in South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, there the per cent. of illiteracy is highest."

I would suggest that this reason alone would be

potent in settling the Race Question by sending the Negro to himself to live in his own ignorance.

In addition to the crime of removal, I repeat that the Negro sent back into Africa in his present state of evolution would simply mean a relapse in his status of civilization. I do not mention this as a case of race inferiority. I do not mean to include in this statement all of the race. There are Negroes who have reached a high degree of intellectuality, but I say in all frankness to send the Negro back to Africa in his present condition would be the crime of the world. The experiment has been tried and it is a horrible failure. In the West Indies and in Liberia we have had examples of what many friends of the Negro race-among others, my distinguished and able friend, the Senator from North Carolina-are insisting should be done with the American Negro. With no intention of depreciating the Negro's ability for self-government, but two examples are sufficient. Take Liberia, upon which state there has been poured millions of dollars by the friends of the Negro; where the highest statesmanship has provided him with a government and a habitation. Here we find a dreadful failure. Says the late minister to Liberia, an intelligent man:

"They have no money or currency in circulation of any kind. They have no boats of any character, not even a canoe. The two gunboats England gave them lie rotten on the beach. They have no guns or swords in working condition, nor even a cannon to fire a salute,

though they purchased at one time 47,000 dollars' worth of guns from the United States.

"There are only four post-offices in the country, one for each of the four counties. The government has no harbor, wharf, or breakwaters for steamers to land at. The next morning I looked for manufactories, mills, shops, artisan establishments of some kind, furnishing employment to the masses. Not one of any description could be found. I enquired for a hotel. They told me that there was none. No tailor-shop, no blacksmith to make a nail, no tinner to make a cup, no jeweller to set your watch; nothing to amuse you, nothing to engage your time, nothing to keep you in earnest. Look from morning till night, and you will never see a horse, a mule, a donkey, or oxen. They have none. There is not a buggy, a wagon, a cart of any kind, or a wheelbarrow in the four counties. The natives carry everything on their heads. .. There are one hundred nude persons to every one wearing clothes. They have no statute against indecent exposure. The government contains no public schools of any kind. The missionary schools teach the natives' children exclusively, when the people in this country and in England have expended in Liberia for education and improvement near $7,000,000. If everything in Liberia was sold excepting the individuals, not more than $1,000,000 could be realized. The Colonization Society claims to have aided 22,000 civilized Negroes to go to

Liberia since they first went there in 1822. To-day, in the whole of Liberia, in a population, native and civilized, of fully 1,000,000, only 12,000 can be said to be civilized."

Take our own continent, and a glance at the island of San Domingo shows a similar condition of affairs in that beautiful island, when left to the absolute control of the Negro race in its present system of evolution. I quote from Mr. Froude's book, The English in the West Indies.

They

"St. Domingo, of which Hayti is the largest division, was the earliest island discovered by Columbus, and the finest in the Carribean Ocean. The Spaniards found there a million or two of mild and innocent Indians, whom they converted off the face of the earth-working them to death in their mines and plantations. They filled their places with blacks from Africa. colonized; they built cities; they throve and prospered for nearly two hundred years, when Hayti was taken from them and made a French province. The French kept it till the revolution. They built towns; they laid out farms and sugar fields; they planted coffee all over the island, where it now grows wild. Vast herds of cattle roamed over the mountains; splendid houses rose over the rich savannahs. The French church put out its strength; there were churches and preachers in every parish. So firm was the hold that they had gained, that Hayti, like Cuba, seemed to have been made a part of the old world, and as civilized as France

herself. The revolution came, and the reign of liberty. The blacks took arms; they surprised the plantations; they made a clean sweep of the whole French population. The island being thus derelict, Spain and England both tried their hand to recover it, but failed, and a black nation, with a republican constitution, and a population perhaps of about one million and a half of pure blood Negroes, has since been in unchallenged possession, and has arrived at the condition which has been described to us by Sir Spencer St. John.

Morals in the technical sense they have none; but they cannot be said to sin, because they have no knowledge of a law. They are naked and not ashamed. They sin; but they sin only as animals, without shame, because there is no sense of doing wrong. In fact, those poor children of darkness have escaped the consequences of the fall, and must have come of another stock after all. Immorality is so universal that it almost ceases to be a fault .. it is the rule. In spite of schools and missionaries, seventy per cent. of the children now born among them are illegitimate. Young people make experiment of one another before they will enter into any closer connection. So far they are no worse than our own English islands, where the custom is equally general; but behind the religiosity, there lies as active and alive the horrible revival of the West African superstitions; the serpent worship, and the child sacrifice, and the cannibalism. The facts are notorious. A few years ago, persons