race, which efforts have failed for the most part because of the ignorance and want of discipline of the mass of the black and colored voters. It goes without saying that, in proportion as they shall become better educated, the negroes will expect and demand more consideration in the division of public offices, and will be better prepared to maintain their demands. How this will tend to promote division on other than race lines, or will improve the present relations between the several races, it is impossible to conceive. The blacks are allowed practically no representation now, alike where they number but a handful and where they are in overwhelming majority. The treatment which they receive in politics is plainly the result of an unwillingness even to share political honors and power with them in any measure. It is not likely that the prejudice against them will be at all subdued when they shall claim their political portion in full measure and shall endeavor to seize it, with or without the aid of the general Government.*

*The differences and lines between the parties in the South are deeper than any questions of policy or principle or patronage. They are the differences and lines between Anglo-Saxon and Ethiopian, between former master and former slave, between aggregated capital and aggregated labor, between a race kept down by sentiment, custom, inheritance and necessity, and a race forced by sentiment, custom, inheritance and necessity to keep it down. The evils will increase with time. As the two races increase they will crowd each other within their territory, and the struggle for place and foothold will become stronger and harder ;

The question recurs, what single substantial ground has he, or have we, to expect that the Negro, or colored man, will ever attain, under any circumstances, to any sort of fellowship with the white man which is now denied by the white man to both, and is denied in large part to the Negro by the colored man? Does not the history of Hayti teach us indeed that, even if the white man were compelled to abandon the Southern States altogether, the race-problem would remain to be settled between the black man and the colored man? Remove one of the three races, and the other two will still be divided. How then shall we expect the three to dwell together in harmony? And how shall we expect the white man of the South, of all men, to concede to both the colored man and the black man the right to rule over him, or to take an effective part in their common government, which is denied by the Negro to the white man in every place where the former is in position to dictate the terms of their relationship? It may indeed be possible for such a state of things to come to pass in America. But it appears to be impossible, if only because it is contrary to every teaching and suggestion of history and present experience, and to the distinguishing and most deeply-rooted principles of the

as the educated class increases among the negroes, its pressure against the confining, repressive forces above will be more serious, and the friction will be more irritating to both sides.-A. B. WILLIAMS, in Harper's Weekly.

white race, as a race. The experiment of trying to fuse two unlike, unequal, and unwilling races of men into one body politic, under circumstances where compulsion was out of question, and where every innate sentiment of exclusion and antagonism was developed and strengthened by the long continued influences of the enslavement of the one race, and confirmed and intensified by the peculiar events which terminated that most unfavorable relation-was certainly unique in the recorded history of nations; and was probably predestined to failure from its beginning. Its success would still be doubtful, we are forced to believe, even if the white people of the former Slave States had entered upon the novel venture of their own will; under the impulse of whatever strong motive; with unanimous purpose; and under the most favorable conditions of time and circumstance that could be imagined. In view of the actual past and present conditions, the hope of any measure of success is the dream of a fanatic or a fool.

Having failed miserably at every step so far as it has been tried, fraught with the assurance of illimitable evils to both races, and barren of promise of any good result to either race-why press the rash endeavor farther, if we can find, or make, any other way out of our difficulties?

VIII.

THE RADICAL SOLUTION.

PERHAPS we can arrive at a better understanding of the real disposition of the whole people of America towards the Negro, and of their probable future sentiment and behavior towards him, and can approach at the same time more nearly to some common basis of agreement among ourselves with regard to the mode of settling the problem of which he is the subject, if we consider how that problem was thrust upon us-how, that is to say, the Negro came to be in America.

Is not his presence here owing wholly to a very ancient and general prejudice against him?

He was a slave before the Southern planter bought him from the Northern ship-master, who brought him to our shores. He was a slave before he was bought by the ship-master and received on board the slave-ship. He was bought as a slave, and brought here for sale as a slave, without the aid or invitation of his late Southern masters, who, whatever their subsequent offences, were certainly not responsible for the introduction of negro slavery into the world or into the United States.

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But the question of responsibility for his subjugation aside, be it remembered that the Negro was selected for his hard fate from among all the nations and races on the face of the earth. The slave yoke has been so long and so generally imposed on him that it suggests a world-wide and abiding recognition of something in his nature to invite the treatment he has received. We need not call it prejudice, and still the fact remains that many nations and peoples, agreeing in little else, have been moved by one idea and impulse common to them all, to enslave this order of man. Why was he alone chosen for this purpose, and why was he alone still held in chains, in this Nineteeth century, while the missionaries of the master race were preaching the gospel to other black men in the African jungles? Was it because he was a negro; because he was a fit and approved subject for slavery? This is to concede all that is urged by those who have least regard for him, least hope of him. And if not for these reasons, then for what reasons?

At any rate, let us consider his present position in the light of what we know of the circumstances of his coming among us.

We have seen that the sentiment which led to his enslavement in America was not and is not confined to the white people of the South or of America. It is older than the Federal Union, or the Colonies, is nearly world-wide, and has been the cause of his enslavement everywhere. If