96 CIVILISATION OF NEGEOES. [CHAP. XXV. 



negro progress, the grand experiment might be fairly 

 tried, of civilising several millions of blacks, not by 

 philanthropists, but by a steadier and surer agency 

 the involuntary efforts of several millions of whites. 

 In spite of prejudice and fear, and in defiance of 

 stringent laws enacted against education, three mil 

 lions of a more enlightened and progressive race are 

 brought into contact with an equal number of la 

 bourers lately in a savage state, and taken from a 

 continent where the natives have proved themselves, 

 for many thousand years, to be singularly unpro- 

 gressive. Already their task-masters have taught 

 them to speak, with more or less accuracy, one 

 of the noblest of languages, to shake off many old 

 superstitions, to acquire higher ideas of morality, 

 and habits of neatness and cleanliness, and have 

 converted thousands of them to Christianity. Many 

 they have emancipated, and the rest are gradually 

 approaching to the condition of the ancient serfs of 

 Europe half a century or more before their bondage 

 died out. 



All this has been done at an enormous sacrifice of 

 time and money, an expense, indeed, which all the 

 governments of Europe and all the Christian mis 

 sionaries, whether Romanist or Protestant, could 

 never have effected in five centuries. Even in the 

 few States which I have already visited since I 

 crossed the Potomac, several hundred thousand whites 

 of all ages, among whom the children are playing 

 by no means the least effective part, are devoting 

 themselves with greater or less activity to these in 

 voluntary educational exertions. 



