CHRISTIANITY AND COLOR.¼ ¼ ¼?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 298, 26 January 1910, Page 3

CHRISTIANITY AND COLOR.¼ ¼ ¼?

To tho Editor. Sir.—M hat I don'l know about Christianity and what 1 don't know about color would till several volumes, but, as I apprehend tis matter, the question lViolvos it-elf into this: Can the branch of Christianity be grafted on to the trunk of savagery? Orthodoxy and sentiment say ''Yes.'" but the clarion voi.-c i of history says "No." Sentiment with a leaven of reason is a good thing. Sen. timent without is one of the most fatal forces known to humanity. It was the weak-kneed sentiment of the late AY. E. Gladstone that was responsible for the second Boer war. It was the misguided sentiment of the late Queen Victoria tliat practically built the Herman Empire. and it is because of her misguided sentiment that fifty years from to-day Harriet Beecher Stowe will be regarded as the worst cnemv the American negro ever had. When that emotional writ.T allowed her roseate-lined imagination "o plav on the black, she dressed hint in a wealth of fictitious virtue of which he never possessed n shadow, and by so doing sh« foisted him on the reading world in general and the American ■people in particular by means of false representation, and to-day the Americans are in the position of a nurse who, afte r rocking a cradle thinkinff it con tained a baby, turned back the -cover and found instead a black snake. When the negro was taken from his African liome he was m many cases a cannhul, and he had no; even a nodding acquaincance with civilisation. Under the tutelage of the slave-owner, who saw to nis morni and sanitary wants, he dev loped | a fair moral standard and was without crime and without disease. Such was hi.- position when Harriet Beecher Stowe trolc a hand in the matter, but she overlooked the fact that the system . which she so roundly denounced wa- the system that had converted the cannibal into a law-aoiding subject. In fact, it is the onlv instance in history where tlie whit c , lias dealt with the foreim black on the same soil in anything like equal numbers. A prominent American once said: <; We have made three great mistakes with th e iregro—the first by making liim a slave, the second by giving. him his liberty, and the third by srivinsr him a vote while he was yet a moral, intellectual, and political infant.' Subsequent events liav 0 proved him >o have been correct, for if it was a misfortune to make him a slave, it was a calamity to live him his liberty. The slave-owner handed hfm over to the nation without disease and without crime. In the hands of the nation he has become idle, vicious, immoral, and diseased. Insanity, which was unheard of ■ in the days of slavery, increased in an alarming degree amongst the negroes of to-day. In everv Southern State there !}.re asvlums for the colored insane, each of which is crowded with inmates. It is admitted that 25 ner cent, of the negro children born in Washington City are illegitimate. In one county in Mississippi there were during twelve months three hunared marriage licenses taken out at the county clerk's office for whites. While in proportion to population there shouFd liave been twelve limidre'3 or more for negroes, the number ! actually issued was just three. According to Dr. Winston, the negro is much the most criminal element of the ! American population. The negro is I much more criminal as a free man than '.lie was as a slave. The negro is increasing in criminality with fearful rapidity, beiii" one-third more criminal now than ten years ago. The negro who can read and write is more r-'minal than the illiterate, a thing whit!: "n be said of no white race on the fatv " ,Vl e earth. The negro is nearly three time.; criminal in the North-east, where he has not been a slave for one hundred years, and thro,, and a-half times as criminal in the North-west, where he has never been a slave, than iie is in the South, where he was a slave until ISCS. The irgro is throe times as criminal as the native white, and three and a-half times as criminal as a foreign white. More than seven-tenths of the negro criminals are under thirty years of age. The above is the hard, cold voice of the American census. The American people have made heroic efforts to bridge the gulf between the while and the black. They lia\e spent millions of dollars on his education: they have tried colonising; they have tried Christianising; but the-,-all failed, and, moreover, religion ami moral- in the mind of the negro are as I wide asunder as the two poles. There I can onlv be o_ne solution of the problem. I Sonic day th ( . gun will be used to undo j the harm done by an emotional woman. | When (hat day comes the boss horror in history will have eventuat-d. There I,is such a thing as political idolatry, and after a long series of historical catastrophes nations still drink at the poison font of Asia, and they are urged thereio by the misguided sentiment of the leader- of the Christian churches. The love offft.h t . Church for tin; negro in the face of the trouble which this unholy alliani-p has !trought about is one of the things that man can onlv wonder at but iinf c x 111 a 3 ii. T'iiev ignore the fp.H that they are llyiii.tr in the face of the oldest law known to humanity—the law of i-ace antagonism. This i« the lav; which has made history, and it is because of the violation of this law that the du-t of dead empires is beiu-jf blown .-ib'-nr the i-c'it'irio-.—j am. etc., l-'RAXK 'BELL. Toko. 22nd January. 1910.