The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-12-19
LIBERIA.

In another column will be found an edi-
toriaI article entitled "The Lesson from
Liberia" from late number of the Chicago
Times, in which summary is given of the
rise, progress, decline and present condition
of once prosperous colony, which grew out
of the efforts Of benevolent men Of America
and Europe. To the last paragraph the a.ten-
ton of the reader is especially directed The
conclusion there drawn as "most obvious is
III Substance what has been well known re-
| speeding the African race by all who have
dealings with them either in their aboriginal
condition or as appendages to tie civilization
| of another race.
Negroes will only advance" says the
Times, when white blood is put in their
veins and white men hold up and direct
them in the path Of progress" We take *
ceptions to the first member of the PROPOSE
ton. When ''white blood is put into the
veins Of the African it is generally blood of
such an inferior order that the result of ." that
effect defective" can scarcely be regarded as
an improvement. Those Of the normally
colored race in whom the moral sense is best
developed know best that hybridity, in itself
q traveatie of tie laws Of nature, is productive
only Of transient c5melness of form and
feature. but Of no permanent moral strength,
no physical stability and only of little
perishabie increase OF Intellect which evapor-
ates in a second generation. They know
that commingling and hybridity, being sins
against physiology, have only transient
effect for even apparent good, but in the end
lead to degeneracy. We conclude, therefore,
that the mixing Of corrupt white blood (for
none other will SO mix) with the blood of the
African, cannot make the latter "advance"
in any steady ard assured line of progress.
The general idea Of the author of the article
Of the Times is, however, well understood and
adequately appreciated. Negroes are barba-
rians, with natural leaning, proclivity
and proneness to an aboriginal primitive
condition from which art, learning cultiya-
tioa, morality and ell Of which civilization is
composed, are far distant. 1t is fact of his
tory that in forty centuries the Africans have
Of themselves made no progress. 1t is fact
that for the Caucasian race during that long
period their history is that of progress and
improvement. 1t is another fact of history
that where Africans have been brought and
kept in contact with the civilization Of white
men they have learned and practiced civil
lied habits, ideas and arts; but it is also a
fact that where such contact, intercourse and
control have ceased the relapse toward the
aboriginal African disposition and habits be
comes at once painfully apparent.
Africans on this continent have learned a
small part Of the A G of civilization. They
have learned he initial lines of the first Of ali
lessons By learning to work. Labor is edu-
cation and discipline and discipline lies at
the base of all civilization. Barbarians who
have learned to live in houses that have
doors, chimneys and windows, who have
learned to plant, cultivate, grind and cook
their grain, who have learned to spin, weave
fashion and wear textile fabrics, and who
have ceased to kill and eat one another, have
already taken long steps towards ciyiviliza-
ton. They need only keep at work fro N
childhood to old age, generation after genera
ton, and century after century, to change |
their original nature entirely and to become |
really civilized. But this is precisely what |
,he African race will not do, except under the |
control or by the example of the enlightened
whites around them. Left to themselves,
hey gravitate towards their aboriginal con-
lition, which forty centuries have not changed |
for the better. Any rational ne
gro, who can comprehend the difference be-
ween himself, here in the broad daylight Of
Christian civilization, and his nude and bar
,arous cannibal cousins in Ethiopia, ought
0 render grateful acknowledgements for the
God fortune that has betallen him.