The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1853-01-19

neither on the errands OF the errands Of
penetrate TO the interior The God nature doubt
for wise purposes however inscruabe has drawn
the chief inets Gordon cannot break through You
may mover on the coast but you dare not set foot on
OF her mud built villagesyeow intermittent fevers
blue plaques and poisons that you well feel
pestilence shoots from the mangroves that fringe
their noble banks, and the glorious sun, which
kindles all inferior nature into teeming, bursting
HE, darts disease into your languid system. No,
you not elected for this work. The great
poser in another branch of his family has chosen out
racedecendants of this torrd region children of this
vertical fitted them by ages OF stern discipline
for the gracious achievement.
"From foreign realms and lands remote supported by
They unharmed through burning clmes and breathe
the tainted air.
Sir, believe that the auspcious work Is begun that
Africa will be civized-civlized by her returning
offspring and descendants believe it because will not
think that this mighty and fertile region is to remain for
ever in its present state-because can other
agency adequate to the accomplishment of the work and
do behold in this agency a most mysterious fitness l
that doubts entertained of the practca-
bity Of the work. founded in part the supposed in
capacity of the civilized men of color in this country to
carry undertaking Of this kind and partly the
supposed hopeless barbarm Of the native races which
is thought by some persons to be to defy the
TO be erroneous. II would, think be unjust to
urge, proof Of tho intellectual inferiority of
the civilized men of color in this country, that
they have not made much intellectual progress. It
appears to that they have done quite as much
could be expected under the depressing circumstances
which they have been placed What branch of the Eu
ropean family if held in the same condition for three
centuries, would not be subject to the reproachs
Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia. urges the intel
cctual nrmity of the African race existing in the
United States. He might have been led to doubt the
Justice of his conclusions, by rejecting that in the very
to which ourselves belong, from charge of degener
acy, made by ingenious French writer Why sir it
is but short time since Anglo Americans habtu
ally spoken of by brethren in England as degene
rate and inferior Within thirty years it has been
contemptuously asked in the liberal journals of Europe
in reference to the natives of the country Of Franklin
and Washington and Adams and Marshall and Jefferson
and Madison, of Irving Prescott Bancroft Tcknor Bry
ant and Longfellow, Who reads an American bookf
In the face of facts like these it becomes to be
what cautious in setting down the coored in Anne
rica one of hopeless inferority.
AGAIN, SIR s doubted whether there Is in the native
races Of Africa, basis of improvabity, If may
that word in which hope of their future civilization
can be grounded 1t is said that they alone of all the
tribes of the earth have shown themselves incapable of
improving their condition. Well sir, who knows thaS
OF the early history of know but little in any
part of the globe dark cloud hangs it. The whole
north and west of Europe, till the Roman civilization
shonc in upon it, as benighted Africa is II
quite certain that at very early period of the history
tained high degree Of culture. Such the case of
the ancient Egyptians dark colored race though not
% tns o I 1ey y .s the
indeed, of the whole ancient world As late as the
fifth century before the Christian era Plato passed hr
teen years in studying their sacred records. The
massive Of their cheerless culture have with
stood the storms of tme better than the graceful
creations of Grecan art Races that emerged from barbar
i'm later than those Africa have with fearful vcisstudes
the part of individual States acquired maintained
superiority Africa but am not prepared to say
that 1t rests natural causes Of final and abiding
character We led into by contemplating things
too much in the gross. There tribes in Africa which
have made no contemplate progress in various branches
of human improvement, On they other hand if look
closely at the condition of the of the population in
Europe from Lisbon to Archangel from the Hebrdes to
the Black sea-if we turn from the few who
0r m atiOu ulturo and
that ordship nature and all her forces which be-
longs to instructed mnd-if turn from these to the
benighed destitute oppressed superstiious, abject
millions whose lives passed in the hopeless tolls of
the field the factory, the mine-whose inheritance is beg
gary whose education is sold gnorance-at whose daily
table hunger and thirst the stewardswhose
tvity is brutal ntemperance-f could count their
numbers gather into one aggregate their destuon of
the joys Of e and thus estimate the full extent of the
practical barbarsm of the nominaly civilized world we
should be inclined perhaps to doubt the essential supc
riorty OF the present improved European race If be
essentially superior, why did it remain long
mriovedy The Africans you say, persevered in
their original barbarism for Ave thousand years.
nearly four thousand years; and in the great
chronology of Providence thousand years are but
as one day. little more than ten centuries ago,
and our Saxon ancestors not civilized than
some OF the African tribes of the present day They
savage warke pcope-prates by sea, bandits shore
whites dark and cruel as themselves and the slave
trade carried on in Great Britain eight hundred years
ago as ruthesay as upon the coast of Africa at the
the light of Christianity upon this midnight darkness
BY degrees, civilization, law liberty, letters and
Of the essential Unborn superiority of the Angosaxon
race, and look down with disdain those portions
of the human family who have Jagged little
the present day, Africa is not the abode of utter
barbarsm. Here again, do not discrimnate-we Judge
the gross Some of her tribes are indeed hopeessly
broken down by internal and the foreign slave trade
and the situation of the whole continent is exceedingly
adverse to any progress in culture. But they not
sayageshe OF the population live by agriculture
there is some traffic between the coast and the interior
there is rude architecture gold dust is collected iron
Is meted weapons and utensils of husbandry and house
hold are wrought, cloth is manufactured and dyed
Palm oil is expressed, and schools taught. Among
no Mahomedan tribes the Koran is read. have
native African in this city who had passed forty OF
his life slave in the field wbo at the age seventy
wrote the Arabic character with the elegance of scribe
And Mungo Park tells us that lawsuits argued with
as much ability, fuency, and at much length,
in the interior of Africa at Edinburgh. certainly
that the condition of the most advanced tribes
the slave trade which exists among them in the de-
porabe FORM The only wonder is that with this
eating into their itas from age to age any degree of
civilization exist But think it may be said, with
out exaggcraton, that, degraded the ninety mil
lions OF Africans ninety millions exist in Europe, to
which each country contributes her quota not much less
degraded The difference s and certainly all important
difference that in Europe ncrmingled with those ninety
millions fifteen to twenty millions, possessed of all de-
of culture to the very highest while in Africa
there is not individual who according standard
has attaineda high degree of intellectual cultivation but If
obvious causes TOR this can be shown, 1t is unphloso
phcal to infer from it essential incapacity But all
doubts of the capacity of the African for self
government and OF their mprovablty under favorable
seem to me to be removed by what we
witness at the present day both in country and
the coast OF that continent Nowithsta nding the dis
advantages of their condition in this country, specimens
OF intellectual ability the talent of writing and speaking
capacity for business for the ingenious and mechanical
arts for accounts for the ordinary branches of acaem
ca learning have been exhibited by colored brethren
which would do no discredt to Anglo -Saxons Pau
Cuer, well recollected in New England, was person of
great energy. HE father was an African slave-his
mother Indian Of the Elizabeth Islands Mass have al
ready alluded to the attanmens of Abderra
haman-a of better respectable ap-
pearance never The learned blacksmith of Alabama
now in Liberia has attained celebrity scarcely inferior
that Of his white brother known by the desgna
ton frequently attended the examinations at schoo
in Cambridge, at which Beverley Williams pupil.
wo youths from Georgia, and Of my own, his
fellow pupils. Beverley born slave in Mississippi,
and apparently of pure African blood He of the
best schoars-perhaps the best Latin schoar-in his
class These indications of intellectual ability,
afforded under discouraging circumstances at home.
L--- H.