The little island of Barbadoes contained 160,000 negroes and about 300 white men, and as there was no waste land for the negroes to squat upon, and the white men took care that they obtained no land so as to qualify, that island has remained a highly cultivated, prosperous and happy country. These last named islands furnish striking contrasts, and the islands of Jamaica and Hayti are irrefragable proofs that unrestricted negro suffrage and negro government bring desolation and ruin to both races; and there is no instance to the contrary in all of the emancipation colonies, including the Hispano-American colonies.
San Domingo, once a Spanish colony, and in which emancipation had taken place, is naturally the most fertile of these islands, and was abandoned by Spain. During General Grant’s term of office, a commission was sent there to examine this island and its resources, with a view of appropriating it, and establishing a negro state, by emigration from the United States. Senator Sumner, the leading exponent of abolition, defeated its ratification in the Senate, well knowing the negro’s incapacity for self-government.
Out of the vast mass of evidence the limits of this paper will not permit more than a few opinions additional, from travelers and men of science, in each instance wholly disinterested in American politics, being natives and residents of other countries.
David Page, of Edinburgh, F. N. S. & C., says: “However much mistaken philanthropy may argue to the contrary, there can be but little doubt that the Ethiopian, or black man of Africa, is inferior both to Mongol and Malay, and still more to the Caucasian. He has had possession of the African Continent with all its variety of situation, climate and produce, from time immemorial, and yet has no arts save the rudest, no literature, no science, no temples, no ships, no cities, no moral code; in most instances no idea even of a Supreme Being; nothing in fine, that removes him beyond the desires and necessities of animal existence.[13]”
Professor Page then quotes the English traveler, Sir Samuel Baker, and says: “Notwithstanding all this and a thousand times more (he refers to the Andamaner and the native of Australia) there are some who still argue about the equality of the human race, and talk high sounding generalizations regarding the unity and brotherhood of men. As well might they contend for equality of brothers of the same family, or equal capacity among the men and families of a nation. As in the physical world there are suns, systems, and satellites, so in the vital and intellectual, there are higher and lower, races born to command and lead, and others as certainly destined to obey and follow.
“It is not because one race has risen under favorable circumstances, and another retrograded or remained stationary under conditions of an adverse nature, but because of aboriginal differences and capabilities, which no circumstances can efface nor appliances counteract.
“Brotherhood there may be and ought to be, as far as the inherent instincts of race toward race will permit; and these instincts are not to be disregarded with impunity; but as to unity, if by unity is meant oneness of power and tendency, it is an assertion that all history and present experience must deny. It is a mere phrase that may please the unthinking ear, but it is not a fact that can satisfy the reason.[14]”
Captain Richard Burton, geographer, explorer, ethnical psychologist, a shrewd and sagacious observer, says: “The study of psychology in Eastern Africa is the study of man’s rudimental mind; when subject to the agency of material nature, he neither progresses nor retrogrades.
“He would appear rather a degeneracy from the civilized man than a savage rising to the first step, were it not for his apparent incapacity for improvement. He has not the ring of the true metal. There is no rich nature as in the New Zealander for education to cultivate. He seems to belong to one of those childish races, which, never rising to man’s estate, fall like worn out links from the great chain of animated nature. He unites the incapacity of infancy with the unpliancy of age. For centuries he has been in direct intercourse with the most advanced people of the Eastern Coast (Arabs), still he has stopped short at the threshold of progress; he shows no sign of development; no higher or varied orders of intellect are called into being.[15]”
“I have,” says Du Chaillu, “been struck with the steady decrease of the population even during the short time I have been in Africa, on the coast and in the interior, but before I account for it, let me raise my voice in defense of the white man who has been accused of being the cause of it. Wherever he settles, the aborigines are said to disappear. I admit that such is the case; but the decrease of the population had already taken place before the white man came; the white man noticed, but could not stop it. The decrease of African population is due to several causes—witchcraft taking away more lives than ever the slave trade did.