Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/284

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THE NEGRO

is to injure the entire human species. To do the latter is to continue the process which the abolition of slav- ery inaugurated, to teach the negro to stand on his own legs, a process which can be no more called in- justice than the exercise of the methods of education, which the world has for us all from childhood. The hardships of the transportation would be tri- fling, and not greater than those which thousands of immigrants to this country voluntarily undergo. I have lived in various parts of the world, and I could be happy in any of them, provided my family and friends were not too far removed. Now it is not pro- posed to separate families and friends in this exodus, so that the picture of sufferings from this cause, drawn by one of my critics, is quite imaginary. As to the country, Stanley states that parts of the Upper Congo region are admirable as places of residence, and free from the swamps of many of our Southern States. Abstract objections on the one side weigh little against facts on the other. Objections against com- pulsory education and against compulsory vaccination are of the same character, and are generally admitted to be valueless as against the important benefits ac- cruing to mankind from the enforcement of these provisions. I repeat again what appear to me to be the facts of the case. The characteristics of the negro-mind are of such a nature as to unfit him for citizenship in this country. He is thoroughly superstitious, and abso- lutely under the control of supernaturalism, in some generally degrading form, and the teachers of it. He is lacking in rationality and in morality. Without going further, these traits alone should exclude him from citizenship. Secondly, these peculiarities depend on an organic constitution which it will require ages to remove. Corresponding qualities in the lower strata of the white race, are modified or removed in a com- paratively short time, on account of superior natural mental endowment. Thirdly, if he remains in this