AFRICA AND TEE AFRICANS. 



393 



wrong. Pure blacks are comparatively rare among 

 us, and as much a novelty to most of us as to the 

 whites. We are simply colored people, and are 

 neither Africans nor negroes." ' 



If this is understood hereafter, it will very 

 much simplify the negro problem, and the race 

 will be called upon to bear its own sins only, 

 and not the sins also of a " mixed multitude." 



The power of race is being more and more 

 understood, and the tendency of the age — a just 

 and wholesome tendency — is to assist the nations 

 to group themselves according to their natural 

 affinities ; and Dr. Tanner could not help being 

 seized by, and giving utterance to, the living 

 conception of the age. It is becoming more and 

 more evident that for the efficieut and successful 

 work of a race, whatever that work may be, 

 homogeneity is an indispensable element. One 

 of the worst difficulties which can beset a nation, 

 especially in the early periods of its existence, 

 is an heterogeneous people. Homogeneity is es- 

 sential to harmony, and both are essential not 

 only to effective working, but even to permanent 

 national existence. 



It must be clear to the reader by this time 

 that when the Westminster Reviewer infers the 

 character and capacity of the negro race from the 

 discouraging examples of the so-called negro 

 states he has cited, he has not been dealing with 

 negroes except to a very limited extent. 



The history of Hayti shows that the negro 

 pure and simple has never had in that island a 

 fair chance in the effort at constructing a nation. 

 Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was the grandson of 

 a powerful African chief, could lead thousands of 

 his people, though of the hereditary servile class, 

 to victory over their oppressors, but such leading 

 minds were few in that large negro population. 

 Moreover, the Haytians never pretended to be 

 solving the problem of negro ability. The island 

 has always, since the revolution, been held joint- 

 ly by the African and the Celtic-African, with the 

 odds largely in favor of the latter, growing out of 

 superior educational advantages, if not of supe- 

 rior transmitted qualities from the paternal side, 

 though grafted for the most part upon a servile 

 stock. 



With Liberia the case is different. Founded 

 in Africa, it started with a purely negro idea as 

 the basis and ultimate aim. The foundation and 

 entire superstructure was to be negro. This, at 

 least, was the idea of its philanthropic founders, 

 and of its earliest settlers. Hence all white citi- 

 zenship or alien participation in the political if 



1 Christian Recorder, January 31, 1878. 



not social arrangements of the country was ex- 

 cluded from the fundamental law of the land. 

 Time, therefore, with the help of the winnowing 

 process suggested by Dr. Tanner's discriminating 

 definition, which, in the case of Hayti, will bring 

 no change, where, perhaps, under the peculiar 

 circumstances, no change is desirable, will bring 

 Liberia more and more into conformity with the 

 great idea which originated its existence. 1 



Sierra Leone is hardly yet beyond the influ- 

 ence of the conflicting and incapable elements 

 which have for nearly a century been thrown from 

 time to time upon its shores from captured slave- 

 ships. But the gradual improvement of inferior 

 peoples brought from various parts of the conti- 

 nent, under the influence, at once restraining and 

 stimulating, of British rule, will, in the course of 

 time — if the effort is successfully made to annex 

 and absorb, or at least incorporate, the powerful 

 indigenous tribes in the neighborhood — make 

 Sierra Leone one of the most important Christian 

 negro communities in the world. But even novv, 

 according to the Reviewer, " the success of Sierra 

 Leone is sufficient to make Mr. Hutchinson and 

 members of the Antislavery Society desire to see 

 a similar colony for liberated slaves established 

 on the East Coast." 



But the laws affecting other portions of hu- 

 manity are not supposed by certain writers to af- 

 fect the negro. He is an exceptional being, made, 

 if not now by the consent of enlightened men for 

 perpetual servitude, at least for the finger of scorn 

 to point at. Learned reviewers, masters of style, 

 and apparently the ablest minds, do not think it 

 an unworthy amusement to rail at the negro, to 

 make him the object, if not always of energetic 

 vituperation and invective, of satirical humor and 

 practical jokes. In reading through the African 

 experiences of Sir Samuel Baker, as furnished by 

 himself, especially in his " Ismailia," one cannot 

 help noticing that however panegyrical the terms 

 in which a benefactor may be introduced on the 

 stage, he is never dismissed without whatever 

 shortcomings he may have had being brought into 



1 The Edinburgh Review (January, 1878), in an ar- 

 ticle on "Stanley's Discoveries and the Future of 

 Africa," after giving a brief but gloomy and not very 

 accurate account of political affairs in Liberia, says: 

 " The experience of Liberia appears strongly to show 

 that the negro is little capable of forming a state simi- 

 larly organized to those of civilized nations. If a band 

 of selected negroes fail, what can be expected from a 

 miscellaneous multitude of them?" The Christian 

 world has had to deal with nothing yet but a " miscel- 

 laneous multitude" of negroes, of whom even the 

 crime de la crime are but sorry specimens of the race 

 at home in its unimpaired integrity and manhood. 



