guilty of these infamies were tried and punished; now they are left alone, because to prosecute and convict them would be to acknowledge the truth of the indictment.

"The blacks as long as they were slaves were docile and partly civilized . . . but the effect of leaving the Negro nature to itself is apparent at last. There is no sign, not the slightest, that the generality of the race are improving either in intelligence or moral habits; all of the evidence is the other way. The generality are mere good-natured animals. The customs of Dahomey have not yet shown themselves in the English West Indies, and never can while the English authority is maintained; but no custom of any kind will be found in a Negro hut or village from which his most sanguine friend can derive a hope that he is on the way to mending himself. Ninety years of Negro self-government have had their use in showing what it really means. The movement is backward, not forward."

I am sorry to make these quotations, but I am making in this address a plain statement of facts and am not dealing with sentiment. We are discussing the facts without regard to sentiment, and I believe that when the facts are well understood the intelligence and philanthrophy of the American people will not support a very large and intelligent class of people who believe that colonization is the settlement of this question. Mark you, I do not make this quotation for the purpose of showing that the Negro race cannot rise to a high

degree of civilization. I believe that with the right guidance it will be one of the factors in the world's affairs.

Now arises the kindred question. If you do not colonize these people how will you save the country from their natural increase? Will they not overwhelm and become the dominant race, thus displacing the AngloSaxon civilization? This argument is often heard and often believed. Many people are of the opinion that the Negro from mere natural increase will become the dominant race factor in the South. The statistics do not bear out this fear of a great relative increase of the Negro. I do not believe that this danger threatens us. Further than this every indication points to the fact that the Gulf of Mexico will be an American sea, that we will practically have control of the islands of the Gulf of Mexico. This seems to me our ultimate destiny. Every condition of business foresight, commercial and military strategy, seems to point in that direction. Since the events of the last year I am more impressed by the suggestion that in addition to Cuba and Porto Rico we should have under our control Hayti and San Domingo. Many of the educated blacks of this country will then naturally turn to these islands where their labor in every sphere is at a premium, and where they can live better and easier and be more efficient than in any other part of the world, excepting Africa. Numbers of them in time will naturally go to the southern islands, where by reason of their natural condition they will be of vast

use in the work of regenerating the rich islands of the southern seas. I further believe that the nations under the providence of God are working out in Africa the destiny of the African race. At the present state of his intelligence the Negro cannot, unaided and alone, contend with the difficulties of African settlement and colonization. He cannot plan by himself, but Africa is being developed under the immediate control of the white race, who are building railroads into those regions and who are supervising its evolution from barbarism and savagery to civilization. This is being done by nations powerful from a military and commercial standpoint, and who are able to afford the protection and pay the money to do the vast work. Here will be one of the great fields and one of the homes of the civilized African race. Not being forced or deported thousands of them will go back and assist the nations of the earth in the development of their people.

This

The great nations which are at the present developing Africa will have need for exactly the people whom we are educating upon the American soil at this time, and I believe that many will find congenial work in developing the great African Continent. does not militate against my view of en masse colonization. One is forced, the other is natural and symmetrical and comes when the people who are able to do the work are fit for the labor which is set before them. They will not be turned loose in the wilds of Africa, but will go there under the superior organizing ability

of the white man to work out the destiny of the Negro race. I believe numbers of them will go to the African Continent, but here in the South will be the home of the great body of the race and the questions must be worked out with that cardinal principle always in view.

Another sure and certain relief from the over-burden of a large colored population will come by reason of the unprecedented commercial and manufacturing growth of the South. This will to a great extent restore the numerical relation between the two races in the South. If the same condition of commercial activity continues in the South within the next ten years as has been witnessed in the last ten years, vast numbers of manufactories of all kinds, in all of the various industries of iron and wood, marble, steel, and of the textiles, will herein have their place. This will cause cities to grow, manufactories to rise, and will bring about all of the active commercial environments of the Northern manufacturer. This will surely carry with it the influx of a large and active white population which will act as a balance to the present congestion of the Negro race. The present limits of the "Black Belt" would easily allow to live within it a population as large as the population of the United States, and the race conditions would be entirely reversed. Under the theories which I have advanced as to the predominance of the white and at the present time more intelligent person, the Race Question would be put in the background. In addition to this, the presence of an active, energetic, manufacturing, white

citizenship would bring about a great solving of the question, in that it would have a vast effect upon the intelligence of the weaker race. We do not fear the intelligent black man. It is the ignorant member of his race who is troublesome.

I will say just here that it has been shown by the most careful researches that there is not the great danger in the increase of the Negroes as has heretofore been supposed. The Senator from Massachusetts, when he speaks of fifty millions of Negroes in the Southern country within a generation, is entirely out of plumb with the facts. The Negro in proportion to the white man shows a diminished increase in numbers. It appears from the most accurate census tables that a century ago the population of the South was made up of whites and Negroes in the proportion of 65 and 35 per cent., and that, in 1890, the proportion was 69 and 31 per The proportion of Negroes increased to 1810, when it reached 37 per cent., leaving only 63 per cent. as the proportion of whites, and this remained stationary for thirty years. Since 1810 the proportion of Negroes has diminished. That is, for the first half of the century the Negro population increased more rapidly than the whites, while during the last half of the century they have increased proportionately less rapidly than the whites, and, in proportion to the numbers, they are diminishing. The whites have increased in a century to the census year of 1890 from three millions to fifty-five millions, and the Negroes from three-fourths

cent.