THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 543 



THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. 



IT is difficult for men who study liistory to read the discussion 

 now raging on the progress of Islam in Africa without re- 

 curring to the old question — which so greatly interested the last 

 generation, and is now so seldom started — the question of what 

 the negro is really like. There are not many left among us, we 

 imagine, though there are some here and there, who doubt whether 

 he is a man at all ; but the conflict of opinion about him is of the 

 most extreme kind, so extreme as to be almost unintelligible. One 

 set of observers, with whom Captain Burton, as we understand his 

 writings, agrees in the main, hold that he is a nearly irreclaim- 

 able savage, a being who can not be ruled except by terror, and 

 who is by nature incapable of rising to the level attained by the 

 white, and even in many respects by the yellow and the brownish 

 man. They think his savagery instinctive, his laziness incurable, 

 and his sensuality far in excess of anything observable in Europe. 

 They declare Africa an accursed continent chiefly because of the 

 negro, and welcome frightful narratives, like Mr. St. John's ac- 

 count of Hayti, as demonstrating past all question the accuracy 

 of their theory. Other observers, again, including many mission- 

 aries and some explorers, are friendly to the negro, think that 

 the repulsion caused by his external aspect makes ordinary men 

 unjust to him, and declare that he is, when not oppressed, essen- 

 tially a docile creature indisposed to vindictiveness, and, though 

 not clever, fairly ready to receive instruction, which, they further 

 add, may occasionally be carried up to any point attainable by 

 the white man. Such observers, among whom we should class 

 keen-eyed Mrs. TroUope, who had rare opportunities of studying 

 the race, and keener-eyed Mrs. Stowe, think the Uncle-Tom kind 

 of negro not rare, and evidently hold that when bad, he is vicious 

 as a European may be, rather than innately savage. A third class 

 maintain that the negro, if carefully observed, is found to be ex- 

 actly like everybody else, with the same passions, the same aspira- 

 tions, and the same powers, with one most remarkable exception. 

 He can not rise in the scale beyond a certain point. The originating 

 power of the European and the imitating power of the modern 

 Asiatic are not in him, or not in the same degree; and he remains 

 under all circumstances more or less of a child, bad or good like 

 other children, but never quite a man. It is added by this class, 

 and in part by the one mentioned before it, that the negro woman 

 is, on the whole^ better than the negro man, with more industry, 

 more fidelity, and decidedly more capacity for the gentler virtues. 

 The third opinion is, so far as we know, that of the majority of 

 missionaries, of most residents in the West Indies not being em- 



