The thanks of the meeting were then unanimously given to Dr. Broca.

Mr. C. CARTER BLAKE remarked on the casts contributed by Dr. Broca that they were of two kinds, indicating different characteristics. The Basque skulls shewed that that people, instead of having, as had been sometimes described, beetling brows,_and being otherwise allied to the skulls of the stone period in Denmark, and with affinity to the Laps and Fins, comprised individuals who were not different in any important respects from the skulls of the ancient, and, indeed, of the existing Celts. It was important to observe that, while the Basques, as a people, differ greatly in language and other characters from other nations, their skulls do not differ from those of many other persons of France and Spain, and the skulls of which the casts were on the table might, indeed, have been derived from an English grave-yard. But the skulls from the bone cave of Orrouy were very different. They belonged to an analogous series of skulls to that which had been derived from the peat beds and river beds in various parts of England. Similar skulls had been found under fifteen feet of gravel at Eastham, near the river Lea; they had been found at Battersea, in the bed of the Thames, in Cornwall, and in other places. They all agreed in many well defined characters. The crania of these river-beds differ in some respects. Further investigations were yet required into the characteristics of these river-bed skulls, and the time had not yet come when their characters could be definitely laid before the Society. No satisfactory generalisation could yet be arrived at to determine whether they belonged to the stone, the bronze, or to the iron period.

Mr. HIGGINS asked Mr. Carter Blake whether he agreed in opinion that the skulls derived from this bone cave represent a family character, and whether the olecranal perforation had been ever observed in river-bed skeletons?

Mr. C. CARTER BLAKE, in reply, observed, that he feared there was a poor story to be told about the skeletons from the river-beds. In these instances there was nothing like the perforation of the olecranal fossa. He agreed that the same character was probably common to the people or family who had inhabited the cave and buried their relatives there. With respect to the perforation alluded to, he did not think it so rare as Dr. Broca appeared to do. In a publication by M. Hollard, about five years ago, many similar instances were noted, and many similar ones had been found by Mr. Blake himself. It had been thought that the perforation repeated a character that existed in the lower animals, but there was no tendency to perforation of the humerus in the animals most closely allied to man.

The following paper was then read :

The Negro in relation to Civilised Society. By S. E. B. BOUVERIE PUSEY, Esq., F.A.S.L., F.E.S.

THE paper I purpose to read is intended to establish the proposition, that the negro (in whatever other respect he may, or may not, differ from the white man) does at any rate resemble him in this, that the only state in which he can attain his full development is one of freedom, as opposed to slavery; and by slavery, I do not mean only that condition called chattel slavery, in which the bondsman has no rights. This (as has been well observed before in this room) exists in a pure form only in Africa.

All the slave codes in existence amongst nations having any claim to civilisation, attempt to confer rights on the slave, though the extent of these rights, and the means by which they are to be enforced, are in most cases miserably inadequate. However, I am not here to discuss the merits of particular slave codes, but to compare slavery at its best with freedom in a civilised country, as applied to the negro.

By slavery, I mean any condition in which an adult is placed (without reference to his own will), at the disposal of another. The abolitionists of slavery feel that they are espousing the generous side of the question; they feel that it is æsthetically to be desired that beings so like ourselves as the negroes are, should also, like ourselves, be best in freedom. But the question is not to be decided on any such grounds.

I have no intention of entering here, unless incidentally, on the problem how far the intelligence of the negro may extend, further than that it is such as to qualify him for personal freedom. I shall not discuss, e. g., whether the negro race is likely to produce men of genius, or is capable of founding by itself a society possessing European civilisation, or, as was suggested in a paper read before this Society, of evolving a peculiar civilisation of its own. I intend to lay before the Society this evening the grounds on which I have been led to believe that the negro possesses sufficient intelligence and industry to qualify him for the place of a freeman in a civilised community. I shall consider:

1. The condition of the negroes in the British West Indies.

2. Their condition in slave countries (the West Indies prior to emancipation included).

3. The condition they have attained in parts of Africa.

It may be said that no man ought to be a slave who is not incapable of providing for himself and his family by voluntary industry. Let us examine by this standard the capabilities of the negro, beginning with the West Indies, because that is the quarter where the question has been most perplexed by contradictory assertions. The authorities on which I shall principally rely in relation to this matter are: The Ordeal of Free Labour in the British West Indies, by Wm. S. Sewell; and The West Indies, their Social and Religious Condition, by Edward Bean Underhill. The former writer is a Canadian, resident in New York; who travelled in the West Indies towards the end of 1859 and in the beginning of 1860, and published his work

originally in a series of letters to the New York Times. The book contains internal evidence of care, impartiality, and desire to get evidence from all sides. It derives additional authentication from the fact of having been reviewed, on the whole favourably, in the Edinburgh Review (January 1862), by a writer obviously an old resident in the West Indies, and by no means unfavourable to the planting interest.

Underhill was a Baptist missionary, who travelled in the West Indies at the request of the treasurer and committee of the Baptist Missionary Society, with the object chiefly of investigating the religious condition of the numerous Baptist churches in the West Indies, especially as that condition has been affected by the Act of Emancipation. I am perfectly aware how strong a presumption there is that a man with these objects would not write an accurate, much less an impartial, work. But I am confident that anyone who attentively, and with an unbiassed mind, reads the book, will be convinced that the work is not only accurate and impartial in the ordinary sense, but written with rare judicial care and fairness. Neither of these writers can be classed with what are called "Negrophilists" and "The Black Party," and neither shows the least tendency to introduce any kind of maudlin sentimentality into his treatment of the subject.

I will try to condense the results I have arrived at from these authorities, as to the condition of the negro in each of the British West Indian Islands, beginning with Barbadoes.

It is admitted even by Trollope, who may be regarded as the great authority of the anti-Negro party, that Barbadoes has not suffered since emancipation. In fact, we find (Sewell, page 62) that the average of sugar exportation from 1720 to 1800 was 23,000 hogsheads per annum; from 1800 to 1830, 20,000 hogsheads; showing a decline under slavery of 3,000 hogsheads: a decline attributed by some to the embarrassments of the planters, and by others to the cessation of the African slave trade. "Let us now look," says Sewell, "at the Barbadoes sugar exportations of the present day, premising with the observation, that from 1826 to 1830, the average weight of a hogshead of sugar was 12 cwt.; from 1830 to 1850, 14 cwt.; and is now from 15 to 16, or even 17 cwt. With this difference of weight against her, Barbadoes exported in 1852, 48,610 hogsheads; in 1853, 38,316; in 1854, 44,492; in 1855, 39,692; in 1856, 43,552; in 1857, 38,858; in 1858, 50,778, or nearly double what she exported during the most favourable year of slavery."* Sewell then passes in review the whole of the exports and imports of Barbadoes with similar results.

It may be asked whether any light can be thrown on the causes of this extraordinary prosperity of the sugar planters of Barbadoes, as compared with those of the other West Indian Islands. We must remember that in Barbadoes the land is as densely peopled as in the old countries of Europe (800 persons to the square mile), and that, therefore, the employer has the command of the labour market. This fact seems to offer a clue to the West Indian enigma, by suggesting This was written in 1859, and the export of 1858 was therefore the last to which the author could refer.

that the phenomena of the West Indian labour market depend, not so much on the characteristics of race, as on the most obvious laws of political economy. We all know that in a new country it is one of the greatest difficulties to obtain steady and continuous labour; for as soon as the labourer amasses a little money, he establishes himself as a small proprietor. Now in the United States, and in our own colonies, the vacuum thus created is perpetually being filled up by a fresh stream of immigration from Europe; but in the West Indies (as the white man either cannot live and work there, or thinks that he cannot, and therefore does not come), and the black cannot now be brought, this vacuum remains unfilled, except partially by Coolie immigration from India and China. This cause would alone be amply sufficient (even if there were no other) for what is commonly called the ruin of the West Indies, i. e., the ruin of their principal planters, and the enormous diminution of their sugar and coffee exports. But we shall find there are many additional reasons which would contribute to that result, equally independent of ethnological considerations. These I shall consider by and bye.

In the small island of St. Lucia also, we find that the sugar exportation amounted, in 1857, to 6,261,875 lbs. against an average yearly export of from three to four millions prior to emancipation. And the exportation of cocoa during 1857 was 251,347 lbs. against 91,280 lbs. in former times. In this island the metairie system prevails, under which the landlord and tenants are partners both in the expenses and in the profits of cultivation. (Sewell, p. 93.) This instance of St. Lucia would seem to show that liberality and flexibility on the part of the owners of the estates may produce the same benecial results to them as density of population.

Having spoken now of the only two islands on which the planters have not suffered, let us examine if there are any causes, unconnected with negro character, which would account for their misfortunes in the other islands. We shall find, on investigation, that the West Indian planters (as a body) were generous indeed, and hospitable, but violent, wrong-headed, unbusiness-like, and devoid of any flexibility in adapting themselves to circumstances, to a degree which has seldom been equalled.

1. They were nearly all non-resident, frequently understood little of the West Indies, and their cultivation; and were, therefore, in the hands of agents who had to be paid large salaries, and lay obviously under great temptations.

2. The business of sugar cultivation is one of a highly speculative character.

3. They were commonly extravagant.

4. As the natural result of these causes combined, they were mostly in debt.

5. Having begun with a system of slavery (unparalleled in its destructiveness to human life, except in Cuba) they strenuously resisted, and considered as intolerable oppression any attempt to extend the protection of the law to their slaves.

6. On the verge of emancipation, with the black population ex

ceeding them in number as five to one, ready to break into insurrection at any moment, they had the insanity to meet the measures of the home government with words and acts bordering on high treason.

7. After emancipation they showed themselves totally ignorant of the nature of a contract. They said, and published to the world, that it was a great crime in the negroes not to work for a "fair" rate of remuneration, as if any man had not a right to stick out for as much wages as he could get.

8. All the results of these their faults were aggravated by the injustice done them in assigning them a compensation amounting only to about two-thirds of the real value of their slaves; we may conclude then, that the ruin of most of the planters is satisfactorily accounted for, without taking into account any differences there may be between the negro and the white man. In fact, if the negro had been as industrious as the Anglo-Saxon, they would certainly have been ruined a great deal faster, for he would more speedily and universally have passed from the condition of a labourer to that of a peasant proprietor or farmer.

As it is certain that in all the islands, except the two I have mentioned, the negro does not readily work for the planter, it becomes a question what does he do? Does he spend his time in idleness, or does he work for himself? This question can be sufficiently answered, chiefly from the authorities I have already mentioned. 1. A considerable number of them work steadily on the roads and in the mines. Sewell states (p. 284), “I sought information from the Chief Commissioner of Roads, who has 3,000 men under constant employment, and he assured me that they worked diligently for five days in the week, going to market after their custom on the sixth, or devoting it to the cultivation of their own grounds. He had no complaints to make of idleness, and instead of there being a deficiency of hands, he could obtain an additional thousand at any time he chose. The men, he said, preferred breaking stones on the road to estate labour, though the former was much the severer work of the two. I inquired further of the superintendent of the Rio Grande copper mines in the parish of Portland, an intelligent, practical, energetic Englishman, who, for eight years, has had a large body of men under his command. He told me that at first the planters ridiculed his idea of getting labour; nevertheless, in all his experience, he has not known what it was to want labour. If he stood in need of five men, fifteen or twenty would apply. These men worked eight hours a day, and for six days in the week; and though some of them had been in the superintendent's employ five or six years, he never had occasion to complain of their idleness."

The overseers on the roads explained to Sewell (page 194) that, in their opinion, the reason why the negroes would not work for the planters and would work for them, was that they paid their wages regularly every week, whilst the planters were generally in arrear, and frequently altogether defaulting.

The prosperity of the negro peasant proprietor in the parish of St. Ann, Jamaica, is shewn in the following passage of Sewell (p. 195):