Statement of the Receipts and Expenditures of the United States during the years 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830, 1840, 1850, and 1857.

Expenditures of the Government during the years 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830,

.do....... 2 14

1850 to 1857 estimating ratio of increase of population at same ratio as per 1840 to 1850, 2 20

From 1790 to 1857

The increase of population has been...........

payment into the treasury.
expenditures..

ART. II.—EQUALITY OF THE RACES-HAYTIEN AND BRITISH EX

PERIMENTS.

THE DOGMA OF THE NATURAL MENTAL EQUALITY OF THE BLACK AND WHITE RACES CONSIDERED.

WHEN the anti-slavery doctrines were first taught, and for many years after, one of the main positions of the advocates was, the assumption of the natural equality and capacity for mental improvement of the black and white races, or the negro and Caucasian. This bold assumption of the one party was either tacitly admitted, or but rarely and faintly denied, by the other. It was then generally supposed that, with full opportunity and facilities, and sufficient time for improvement, the negro could be raised to be equal to the white man in mental acquirements-or, at least, to the capacity for selfgovernment, and self-support, and preservation. There had then been no sufficiently long and full practical trial or experiment of this doctrine. Since, there have been ample trials in practice which have served so fully to prove the contrary, that no unprejudiced mind can now admit the equality of intellect of the two races, or even the capacity of the black race either to become or remain industrious, civilized, when in a state of freedom and under self-gevernmentor, indeed, in any other condition than when held enslaved. and directed by white men. A few general statements and comments thereon will be here presented, on each of the several great and long continued experiments of freedom conferred on negroes, either as individuals, or in societies and communities, independent of the white race.

THE INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY OF THE BLACK RACE, TESTED BY FACTS, IN THE UNITED STATES.

Hundreds of thousands of individual cases of emancipated slaves, and their descendants, have existed in this country in

the last two centuries. This class has now increased, in Virginia alone, to more than 50,000 in number. In the nonslaveholding States, also, there are numerous free negroes. It is true, that when thus interspersed among the much more numerous and dominant class of white inhabitants, the free negroes are subjected to some depressing and injurious influences, from which they would be relieved if forming a separate community. But, on the other hand, they have derived more than compensating benefits from their position, in the protection of government to person and property, and the security of both, and exemption from the evils of war, and from great oppression by any stronger power. Yet, in all this long time, and among such great numbers of free negroes, everywhere protected in person and property, and in the facilities to acquire property-and in some of the Northern States, endowed with political, as well as civil rights and power equal with the white citizens-still to this day, and with but few individual exceptions, the free negroes in every State of this Confederacy, are noted for ignorance, indolence, improvidence, and poverty-and very generally, also, for vicious habits, and numerous violations of the criminal laws. In this plentiful country, where the only great want is for labor, and where every free laborer may easily earn a comfortable support, this free negro class is so little self-sustaining, that it now scarcely increases, in general, by procreation, and would annually decrease throughout the United States, if not continually recruited by new emancipations, and by fugitives from slavery. The free negroes fare best in the slaveholding States, and in them only is the whole increase by procreation. In the Northern or "free" States, if the free negroes were not continually added to by emancipated and fugitive slaves from the South, there would be seen a continued diminution of number, from the effects of suffering from want, and vicious habits. In all this long time of freedom, and with great facilities for improvement, there has not appeared among all these free negroes a single individual showing remarkable, or even more than ordinary, power of intellect or any power of mind that would be deemed worth notice in any individual of the white race. Yet, in the Northern States, free schools are open to the children of the blacks as freely as to the whitesmany have received collegiate education-and nothing but the immutable decree of God, fixing on them mental inferiority, has prevented high grades of intellect and of learning, being displayed in numerous cases. Further, the absence of industry is as general as the inferiority of mental powers. Some few negroes are laborious, frugal, provident, and thrifty.

THE LIBERIA EXPERIMENT.

29

A very few have acquired considerable amounts of property. But these rare qualities were not hereditary-and the children of these superior individuals would be as like as others to fall back to the ordinary condition of their class. In short, taken throughout, and with but few exceptions, the free negro class, in every part of this countty, is a nuisance, and noted for ignorance, laziness, improvidence, and vicious habits.

EXPERIMENT OF COLONIZING FREED NEGROES IN LIBERIA.

But philanthropists, while admitting these facts, had associated the continued debasement of the free negroes in this country to their previous low condition, and to their still inferior position to the far more numerous and dominant white class. Relief from this alleged evil to the blacks, and, with it, every benefit of industry, thrift, and improvement, was expected to be obtained by the free negro when colonizing Liberia, in Africa. That colony has now been established forty years. It has been sustained, by funds raised by or for the Colonization Society, better than any colony ever before planted and settled by white people. It has wanted for nothing that the most benevolent and parental care of guardianship could provide. The settlers were generally of the best of the class of free negroes of this country, or of emancipated slaves, selected and provided for by their former owners, to enjoy the supposed benefits of freedom. The people and the government have had the protecting, beneficial, and always-desired guidance of white intellect; and there has been no injurious influence from white residents, or foreign interference. Besides all the money and commodities so liberally bestowed by benevolent individuals in this country to plant and support this colony, some of the State governments have afforded to it pecuniary or other aid, and the Federal Government has given much more important, though indirect aid and support, and also military and naval aid and protection. Further: since the so-called independence and ostensible self-government of Liberia, the higher officers of government have been mostly mulattoes, who are as much of the white as of the black blood and intellect. With all these advantages, and such long support by the money, and direction by the intellect, of the whites, the colony of Liberia is a complete (though a partly concealed and denied) failure. With a soil of exuberant fertility, and a climate no less bountiful for production, the inhabitants of Liberia do not yet produce sufficient food and other necessary means for subsistence. All the necessaries of life, including rice, sugar, and others of the most ready and plentiful products of the country, sell at such exorbitant

prices as to show plainly their usual scarcity. Lately the people were even menaced by actual famine, because of the great scarcity of articles of food, and the want of means to purchase food from abroad. Indolence and aversion to regular labor are universal. Agricultural operations and production are in the lowest condition. If the long-continued aid of the Colonization Society was even now withheld, and also the benevolent guidance and influence of the intellect of the white guardians and protectors, this much boasted and falsely eulogised colony, and now "Republic of Liberia," would rapidly decline below its present low condition; and all the residents, who could not escape from it, to find shelter under the shadow of the white man's presence and government, would sink to the state of savage barbarism and heathen ignorance and vice, such as had formerly overspread the land. The only means by which negroes in Africa, as well as in America or elsewhere, can generally be made industrious and useful as laborers, and civilized, moral, and christian, will be when they are placed in the condition of domestic slaves to white masters.

Still earlier was made, and has been much longer continued, the settlement of free negroes in the colony of Sierra Leone, under the direction and care, and at the expense of the British Government. It is enough to say for this experiment that its failure has been much more signal than that of Liberia. The settlers of Sierra Leone were mostly recaptured and uncivilized Africans. In Liberia nearly all the colonists had been civilized by the best preparatory training of slavery in America. The difference alone would serve to account for the greater failure of the scheme of Sierra Leone.

While so many whites in Europe, and even in America, blinded by prejudice, fanaticism, or ignorance of the negro characteristics, have argued to maintain the natural equality of the negro mind, the negroes themselves, including the most enlightened among them, have universally acknowledged the inferiority of their race. One of the results of this acknowledged inferiority is the well known general unwillingness of negroes to be governed by men of their own race,

*The following paragraph, not long since, appeared in the Richmond Dispatch, and various other papers, without comment, and has not been contradicted, and, therefore, is presumed to be correct, though the authority was not stated:

"A correspondent, at Liberia, writes that provisions are mostly imported from the United States. Flour ranges from $12 to $16 per barrel; hams and bacon from 20 to 25 cents per pound; hard bread $18 to $12 per 100 pounds; rice $5 per bushel; butter 624 cents per pound; salt fish from $12 to $14 per barrel; sugar 25 cents per pound; potatoes $1 25 per bushel; and everything for family use proportionately high.”