in EMANCIPATION— BLACK AND WHITE 67 



less the superior, of the average white man. And, 

 if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when 

 all his disabilities are removed, and our prog- 

 nathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as 

 well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete 

 successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller- 

 jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on 

 by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places 

 in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not 

 be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it 

 is by no means necessary that they should be re- 

 stricted to the lowest. But whatever the position 

 of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social 

 gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility 

 for the result will henceforward lie between 

 Nature and him. The white man may wash his 

 hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void 

 of reproach for evermore. And this, if we look to 

 the bottom of the matter, is the real justification 

 for the abolition policy. 



The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an 

 illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the 

 slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised 

 man; mankind may even have to do without cot- 

 ton shirts; but all these evils must be faced if 

 the moral law, that no human being can arbi- 

 trarily dominate over another without grievous 

 damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as 

 readily demonstrable by experiment as any 

 physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can 



