Indeed, they can not avoid making war upon the social order of the South. It is a necessity that exists in the nature of things, and springs spontaneously from the circumstances that constitute the opposing conditions, and therefore, from 1776 to 1860 this warfare, openly or secretly, on the battle-field, or the still more dangerous arena of public opinion, has been uninterrupted. Their system is based on artificial distinctions—on things of human invention; ours on natural distinctions—those fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty; and so long as England is an American power her policy must be in conflict with our own. If it could ever be successful—if the twelve millions of negroes on this continent could ever be forced from their normal condition of subordination into a legal equality with the whites—then it is obvious democratic institutions would be rendered impracticable. A simple statement of the facts involved would seem to be sufficient to convince every American mind not corrupted by British opinions, that the British “anti-slavery” policy is part and parcel of the British system, and therefore must go on as it has gone on until it either overthrows our republican institutions, or England, and indeed all other European governments and European influences are driven from the New World. The causes of West Indian “emancipation,” therefore, lie deeper and are far wider in their scope, and immeasurably more deadly in their consequences than any temporary schemes of commercial rivalry, as suggested by Mr. Calhoun, to monopolize tropical products.
They strike at the national life—at the heart of republicanism, at the fundamental principle that underlies our system, at the everlasting truth that all who belong to the race are created free and equal; and should it ever be successful, should our people ever become so corrupted in opinion, and so debauched in their instincts as to assent to the British “anti-slavery” policy and “abolish slavery”—distort and transform themselves into equality with negroes, then it could not be long before the forms as well as the spirit of republicanism would disappear from the New World, and whatever might happen in the course of centuries, all that Washington and Jefferson and the glorious spirits of 1776 labored for would be lost to mankind.
While British and monarchical writers, therefore, have labored to corrupt the nation at the heart—to delude the reason and debauch the instincts of our people—to teach them that the negro was a man like themselves, and that the instincts which God gave them for their guidance in these respects were unworthy prejudices—that to retain this inferior and different being in a subordinate social position corresponding with his wants and our own welfare was wrong—an evil, a sin—in short, “enslaving him”—while European writers and their dupes among us were thus at work corrupting the intellect of a great people, the British government have steadily labored to reduce their teachings to practice and to “abolish slavery” in all their American possessions. It has been estimated that something like five hundred millions of money have been expended within the last seventy years to carry out the British “anti-slavery” policy, to abolish the natural supremacy of the white man over the negro, to obliterate the distinctions fixed by the Almighty Creator, and equalize those He has created unequal. This vast expenditure is wrung, of course, from the toil, and sweat, and misery of the English laboring classes, and to pay the annual interest on it every laborer in England is compelled to give a certain portion of every day’s toil, which is thus taken from the mouths of his children to carry on a policy at war with liberty in America, but which through the monstrous delusions of the day is represented to be the noblest philanthropy! An aristocracy, a class, a mere fraction of the people, have laid this enormous burden on their brethren, their own race—those whom God created their equals—in order to obliterate the distinctions by which the Almighty has separated white men and negroes; or, in other words, to preserve their distinctions—those which they have invented, which separate themselves from their brethren, the British aristocracy have mortgaged the bodies and souls of unborn generations of their kind in an impious and fruitless effort to destroy the distinctions that separate races, and equalize white men and negroes in America. The interest for a single year on this enormous sum, this mighty burden laid on the working classes of England, expended on popular education, would doubtless react in a wide-spread revolution and the utter annihilation of those who, under the pretence of philanthropy, or of liberating negroes in America, have imposed these stupendous burdens on the people.
A few years since, an awful dispensation of Providence in a neighboring island swept away in a brief space of time something like three millions of people—but, if the annual interest paid on the debt contracted under pretence of benefiting negroes in America had been applied to the relief of the Irish, probably all or nearly all of these unfortunate white people might have been saved. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose that, if the money taken from Irish laborers within the last seventy years and expended for the assumed benefit of the negro had been applied to their relief during the famine in Ireland, few if any would have perished, and that awful calamity never would have disfigured the annals of mankind.
It is the practice of some ignorant and superficial people among us to glorify this stupendous misery inflicted on the ignorant and helpless of their own race under the pretence of benefiting the negro. If it had done so—if, instead of an almost equal mischief to the negro, it had done him a boundless good—the crime against their own helpless and miserable people—the poor, ignorant, overworked, and under-fed laboring millions of their own race—would still scarcely find its parallel in the history of human wrongs. But it inflicted a still greater crime on the white people of the islands for it has doomed them to extinction—not absorption by the negro blood, as already explained, but entire extinction—that result being simply a question of time. Such, briefly considered, are the causes and the results, so far as the dominant race are concerned, of the British “anti-slavery” policy, which, beginning in the latter part of the last century, has been steadily and vigorously persisted in, and is, probably, in the face of all its failures in respect to its avowed objects, more energetic and active at this moment than ever before. All the islands are now, whether owned by England or other European powers, substantially turned over to the negro. The governments are simply means for working out this ultimate result. England, for example, sends out to Jamaica a governor, secretary, and a few other officials, perhaps to carry on the government of that island. The governor probably selects his council from the white element, for the reason that the intelligence of the negro is incompetent to the functions attached, and in respect to the more important official positions generally, they are, from the same cause, filled by white men, or by those of predominating white blood. But the policy of the government is to place power in the hands of the blacks, and therefore all the subordinate official positions are filled by these people, as, indeed, all the higher and more important places would be if there was sufficient intelligence to perform the functions properly.
A foreign power—an aristocracy of the Old World—employs a machinery, a contrivance, or thing called a government, to exterminate the white population in these islands, and to turn them over to the rule of the negro. Under the English system, political or official position, unlike ours, carries with it social importance, and a negro who is a member of the legislature or a magistrate in Jamaica is elevated, in a social sense, above the white who holds no official position, no matter what his claims may be in other respects. With the same legal and political rights, the same schools, and with largely predominating numbers, and most of the official positions in their hands, which, under the British system always gives social importance, the whole operation of the government is employed to elevate the negro in the social scale, and to depress the white man. Of course, intermarriage or affiliation—that hideous admixture of the blood of different races which God has eternally forbidden, and so fearfully punishes with extinction—is a direct and necessary consequence of this governmental policy.
A short time since the Queen of England knighted a negro, and as this factitious elevation placed him in a social position, quite above the untitled white man of Jamaica, the white woman of fashion would, doubtless, smother the instincts God gave for her guidance, and desecrate her womanhood by an alliance with this creature whom God made inferior, but whom a woman, four thousand miles distant, was pleased to make her equal. The government, therefore—all the governments of the British Islands, and, indeed of all other European powers, are simply instruments that are employed to elevate the negro and to depress the white man to a common level, to equalize races, to obliterate distinctions fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty, and make the negro the equal of the white man. It is no negative or laissez faire policy—no neutral or indifferent desire to apply a theory and leave it to work itself out—no mere abstract declaration that all are equal, and therefore should be left free to ascend or descend in the social scale according to their merits; but, on the contrary, the government is an active and all-potent machinery, in constant operation to force the negro up, and the white man down, to a common level. And it is probable that people in England look upon this policy as just and proper. The negroes largely predominate in number—why should they not have most of the offices? They have been wronged and oppressed, and are without education, and therefore the higher places must be filled by white men; but why should not they enjoy all the places they are fit for? Such, doubtless, is the notion of those in Europe, who, utterly ignorant of the negro, suppose him a man like themselves, except in his color. But human ignorance and impiety can not change His eternal decrees or alter the works of the Almighty. A middle-aged, respectable woman in England may “Knight” a negro, and declare that she thus makes him superior to the common throng of white men, but the black skin, and woolly hair, and flat nose, and gross organism, and semi-animal instinct, fixed by the hand of the Eternal, remains just the same, unaltered and unalterable forever. All that is possible with the middle-aged woman in question, and those who surround her, is to corrupt, to debauch, to destroy, to exterminate, to murder their own blood, to doom the white people of those islands to a fate more horrible than the universal slaughter that swept away the whites of San Domingo. The process of extinction now rapidly destroying the white population of these islands has been already considered, but it may be stated again in this place, for it involves such tremendous consequences that it should be shouted in the ears of the world with the voice of an earthquake. The legal and political equality of the negro necessarily carries after it social equality wherever they predominate in numbers, and when there are no social distinctions of race or blood recognized, when that instinct which God has given us to protect the integrity of the organism, is debauched and trampled under foot—when, in short, the “prejudice against color” is lost, then such depraved creatures do not hesitate to form those hideous alliances that generate mulatto offspring. And when the whole force of government is brought to bear against the “prejudice” that revolts at social equality—the hideous affiliation, the monstrous admixture of blood, the vile obscenity that they may term marriage, follows with equal certainty. But the result of this admixture—the wretched progeny—the diseased and sterile offspring—has a determinate limit, and it is solely a question of time when it becomes wholly extinct. Any one reflecting a moment on this subject—that is, any American whose instincts are healthy and true—would surely prefer that his offspring should perish from the earth rather than to mix their blood with that of the negro; and as the white blood in Jamaica, etc., is rapidly mixing with the negro, and without foreign addition to the white element it must soon be universally tainted with the base alloy; and as all mongrels must of necessity ultimately perish, it is certain that the fate of the white people of these islands is vastly more deplorable than was that of those suddenly swept from existence in the Island of Hayti.
The policy of England in this respect is universally adopted in the other islands. The first step was a war upon the “slave trade”—then “emancipation,” then the active employment of the government to enforce the theory of a single race by forcing the negro up and the white man down to an abhorrent, but, of course, impossible level; for those they have transformed into a hideous kind of equality must finally perish, and in the whole tropical centre of the continent, ultimately become extinct. Meanwhile labor, production, and civilization are tending to the same common extinction with the white blood. In Jamaica, Barbadoes, and some other islands where there is yet a considerable white population, the negro, despite the influence of the government, is kept in a certain restraint. He labors little, it is true, but with little patches of land he grows bananas and other products that in that genial clime enable him to live in a certain comfort (to him), and thus—while the same being would rapidly perish in Massachusetts—to multiply himself. The horrible traffic in Mongols or coolies, since the negro was released from labor in the islands, has enabled the owners of some of the former flourishing plantations to continue their cultivation, and to furnish in some places almost their former products, and thus to deceive the world and to delude those who desire to be deluded in respect to the non-productiveness of the free negro.
But, as has been shown, the negro neither does nor can labor, in our sense of the word. His dominating sensualism forbids such a thing, while his limited intellect, like that of the child, renders him unable to labor for a remote result, or deny himself immediate indulgence, in order to acquire an ultimate good. In his natural state, and isolated from the white man, he calls into exercise his powerful senses for his immediate wants, and with no winter or barren seasons to contend against, and favored with a soil with its many and nutritious fruits growing spontaneously all about him, he has little more to do than to pluck and eat. In this way he lives, multiplies himself, and enjoys an animal existence, which to us seems miserable enough certainly, and, in comparison with his condition at the South, is indeed miserable enough; but to this he is rapidly tending in the West Indian Islands, and the whole power of the British and other European governments are rapidly forcing him into this condition.
In Hayti he is now nearing this final condition—this inherent and original Africanism to which he is tending in the whole of tropical America. Seventy years ago the mulattoes rebelled against the whites; they excited and impelled the negroes to join them; the whites—only twenty-five thousand—were immolated or driven from the island. Then came the conflict among themselves; the mulattoes and mongrels in turn were massacred, or sought shelter in San Domingo, the Spanish part of the island, and the negroes, masters of the field, with their natural tendencies unchecked, without guides or masters, have finally culminated in Solouque—a typical negro—a serpent worshipper and Obi-man, as chief or emperor.