14 JOHN EEADE OlST 



Gilliam, in au article on the stibject, based on the statistics of the last two censuses, 

 maiutaiued that the coloured people were increasing at a rate, which, unless prompt 

 measures were taken to prevent it, would result in the inhabitants of the country becoming 

 Africanized. Mr. Henry Gannett, in a recent contribution to the same journal, disputes 

 the data on which Prof Gilliam founded his argument, and denies that the negroes, either 

 in the cotton States or in the country at large, are increasing so rapidly as the whites, and 

 holds that the fear entertained of the latter being ultimately outnumbered is entirely 

 groundless. But it is vain to expect that so significant a problem can be solved or shelved 

 by merely correcting a few census mistakes. Even if the six and a half millions of African 

 origin were dispersed all through the States, with its forty-three millions of whites, the pro- 

 portion of the former is large enough to cause uneasiness to those who think that the merg- 

 ing of the two bloods would not improve the race. As Bishop Dudley points out in the Cen- 

 tury, the coloured residents of the South will almost all remain there where the two races are 

 nearly ecj^ual, and if intermarriage takes place, the issue will not be a new people with a 

 small trace of African blood, but a community of mulattoes. The bishop, who. Christian 

 philanthropist though he is, has not yet altogether discarded the sentiments of ante beJlum 

 days, looks with horror on the equanimity with which Canon Rawliuson contemplates 

 such an experiment in race-fusion. And yet what he cannot accept as a doctrine for the 

 present, may, he admits, be received with favour by generations still unborn. " What may 

 come," he writes, " in the far-distant future, when by long contact with the superior 

 race the negro shall haA^e been developed to a higher stage, none can tell. For 

 my own part, believing, as I do, that ' God has made of one blood all the nations 

 of men,' I look for the day when race peculiarities shall be terminated, when the 

 unity of the race shall be manifested. I can find no reason to belieA^e that the great 

 races, into which humanity is divided, shall remain forever distinct, with their race- 

 marks of colour and of form. Centuries hence, the red man, the yellow, the white 

 and the black may all have ceased to exist as such, and in America be found the 

 race combining the bloods of them all ; but it m^^st be centuries hence. Instinct and 

 reason, philosophy, science and revelation, all alike cry oiit against the degradation of the 

 race by the free commingling of the tribe which is highest with that which is lowest in 

 the scale of development." Dr. Dudley seems to forget that such commingling seldom, if 

 ever, takes place of malice prepense, nor, indeed, are many marriages the result of deliberate 

 forethought. However anxious people may be for pure blood and pedigree and healthy 

 organism in connection with their live stock, it has not as yet become usual to apply the 

 same physiological reasoning to the question of human increase. If, early or late, the 

 races of the United States are destined to coalesce, the union will come about not " with 

 observation," but through the general and almost imperceptible obsolescence of prejudices. 

 That the aboriginal Indian element has been largely absorbed by the European settlers 

 in the United States as in Canada, is pretty well established. Some of the best families in 

 Virginia and other States have had Indian ancestors. Frontier life lias always promoted 

 Buch unions, and it must be remembered that, in its turn, every portion of the vast region 

 from ocean to ocean has been a frontier settlement. Winthrop has placed it on record, more- 

 over, that, after wars with the natives, it was customary to disperse the women and female 

 children among the towns of the colonists, the male children being sent to Bermuda.' 



' Wilson's Prehistoric Man, ii. 253. 



