The Negro in America. 227 



Facing back over the history of the negro in America is not 

 cheering. Looking forward is trying to the stoutest-hearted optimism. 

 Africa still mocks America from her jungles. In the words of 

 William Garratt Brown, " Still," she jeers, " with the dense darkness 

 of my ignorance I confound your enlightenment. Still with my sloth 

 I weigh down the arms of your industry. Still, with my supineness 

 I hang upon the wings of your aspiration. And in the very heart 

 of your imperial young Republic I have planted, sure and deep, the 

 misery of this ancient curse I bear." 



We have come to the end of the subject. Perhaps a few remarks 

 on the Native problem in South Africa will make a fit ending to this 

 paper. I believe South Africa can learn a great deal from the 

 bitter experience America, especially the Southern States, has had 

 in the past. 



The first lesson to learn is the danger of too hasty legislation. 

 How much better it would have been after the Civil War had the 

 wild Radicals been kept under, and far-seeing statesmen been at the 

 helm of State. No such hasty legislation W'Ould have been passed, 

 and the condition of the negro would have been better to-day. In 

 such momentous questions the greatest care and the greatest study 

 are essential. 



The next lesson to learn from the American experience is this : — 

 Beware of the enthusiastic, irrational sentimentalist. He sets out 

 in the world with his sails all a-flying, expecting to do good at every 

 turn, but he generally succeeds in inflicting irreparable damage. 

 Some one has said that the irrational sentimentalist does as much 

 harm in the world as the rational blackguard. Most of the Radicals 

 were sentimentalists, ignorant as babes of the issues involved ; some of 

 them were unscrupulous, scheming politicians, who cared not what 

 became of either race in the South, so long as their ends were 

 accomplished. 



The next lesson is the education of the negro. I have said that 

 education has done little for the negroes as a race. The wrong 

 kind of education has been given the negro, exactly the same as a 

 white child receives. 



No doubt the reason for this is the wave of liberalism which 

 swept over the world, so that men looked at things as they desired 

 them to be, not as they actually were. The declaration " All men are 

 created equal " becomes on scientific enquiry an absurdity. All 

 men of the same race even are not equal. Most of us would like to 

 equal Shakspeare in poetry, or Newton in Natural Science, but we 

 know how woefully unequal we are to these great men. 



What is true of men is also true of races. The fatal 

 mistake made in America in dealing with the negro race was that 

 it was supposed that the black man was the w'hite man's equal in 

 every respect, and only required the same environment and the same 

 opportunitv to equal the achievements of the Caucasian race. The 

 fact is that race traits and tendencies have been neglected too much 

 in the studv of nations, and that environment has received more than 

 its due. There is abundant evidence that we find in race and 



