WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1893.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 247, 18 October 1893, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1893.

The records brought by the last San Francisco mail, which appeared in our columns, of various outrages by negroes in the Southern States, and of savage reprisals made upon them by the whites, reveal an increasing hatred between the two races. Large numbers of both races appear to be arming and organising, and indications are not wanting that in the Southern States a race war is approaching. To say the least, it is clear enough that year by year the negro question is becoming more and more a grave danger to the working of free institutions in a great country, in which Englishman all over the world take a deep interest, as a nation possessing similar customs, laws, and free institutions to their own, and, above all, of the same language—a country, indeed, where there are more English-speaking people than in all the rest of the world.

The numerous contributions to American reviews indicate an increasing recognition of the necessity ot dealing with this most difficult problem. In these articles the causes and difficulties are pointed out with sufficient plainness, Some of the writers propose to cut the Gordian knot by abolishing negro suffrage. But this is a remedy much more easy to propose than to carry into operation, if for no other reason than that if the negro vote were free, the Republican party know that the Southern States would no longer " go solid " for the Democrats. Therefore, whilst the Democratic party would willingly abolish negro suffrage, the Republicans naturally oppose its abolition. The Thirteeenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, have made sueI cessive attempts to enfranchise tbe ' negro, and place him on the same level as the white man. These efforts appear to us to have been practically in vain, for in the South negro voters do not count for much. From President Lincoln downwards, every effort to put the negro on the same level of 1 political rights as his white fellow citizen, has so far failed, for the reason that the negro race is not equal to the ; white race in its sense of responsibility, in its perceptive faculties, or in its intellectual power. The attempts, therefore, to make the negro equal to the Anglo-Saxon is as likely to succeed as an attempt to make the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin. It is no fault of the negro that he does not yet understand the first principles of the free institutions under which he lives. Long years of slavery taught him to obey, but they did nothing to learn him the much harder lesson of how to rule. What sort of success tbe negro makes in governing, |we may see in the Black Republic of :Kayti. The total ignorance of the science and practice of self-government exhibited by the negro race, will only be changed by the slow evolution of years or centuries. Even then, it is by no means certain that centuries of undoing will obliterate what ages of tyranny have done, for the constitutional difference between the races will still remain.

The disregard of this defect in the negro lies at the foundation of the grave errors committed by the adoption of the various measures attempting to make that equal which Nature and circumstances have made unequal. You might as well take a boy in the first days of his apprenticeship and put him in command of a locomotive and expect him to run it with safety to the train passengers. If the passengers, refusing to De the victims of incapacity ending in a cert? in catastrophe, rose and removed by force the unskilled boy from his post, who could blame them? Therefore, however much we may disapprove of some of ihe measures taken by the Southern States to annul the votes cast by negro dectors, or to prevent their voting at all, it may as well be recognised that the Southern States in so acting have but obeyed the law of self preservation, which is often as imperative.in politics as in Nature. At present, negro suffrage is a fraud and a danger. In this case, as always, true wisdom lies along the lines of honesty and courage. There can, we think, be little question that the conferring of universal suffrage upon the newly enfranchised negroes was a grave and cardinal error, but to annul electoral rights once granted presents a serious difficulty, though in the case we are considering'

it is not an impossible one. If you mount a man who has never been on horseback on a fiery steed, you may either permit the rider to be hurried on to a certain catastrophe, or you may take means—even if forcible ones—to prevent both horse and rider rushing to destruction. The repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment proposed by some writers in the United States would probably have the general effect of disfranchising the negro. Such a result would prevent all chance of a possible political elevation of the coloured people, and would perpetuate in another and a worse form what_ is now a disquieting element, and which would then become a real danger. At present the negro possesses a vote which in many cases he cannot or dare not use. As a man he must feel a sense of injustice in possessing electoral rights which he cannot exercise. Such a condition cannot long continue, and he is, therefore, in a condition peculiarly open to be influenced by designing -whites or crafty blacks. It does not appear to us—who at least claim to be impartial observers— that the unconditional and absolute repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave electoral rights to negroes, would be either politic or wise. In place of its repeal we think, however, some modification of its provisions might be effected, either by way of limiting the franchise among negroes, or by giving them special representation, as we do the Maori. This course would remove the fraud and violence which are now a reproach, but which must continue if the white race in the Southern State is not to be under the heel of the negro. It would also have the advantage of stimulating the negro race to endeavour to rise ultimately to the full dignity of a citizen of the United States. In any case the negro question in the United States cannot be permitted to drift in the direction it is now doing, if the ultimate alternative of a race war is to be avoided, Nor is the matter without interest to the colonies of Great Britain, for already in the West Indies more than one island is under the dominion of a black suffrage. In the Cape the dark race question does not loom pleasantly. The time is coming there when either conquest or enfranchisement in some such way as we propose appears to be inevitable.