The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-11-08
WHITE MEN WILLRULE
THEY ARE But SURELY
SECURING CONTROL IN AFRICA.
IL 1t Possible to Devise a System
Can Live and Society Progresss
London Spectator.

as to the condition of its guardianship.
otherwise there will be misery among the
blacks and generalization among the
whites. Except in Hayti. there is now no
black race which Is not under white SOW
ereignty, or expecting white sovereignty,
or preparing itself for a last fight in pro-
test against that encroaching dominion. In
East Africa. South Africa. West Africa.
the Congo State. the West Indies and the
Southern States of America the white do
minion is supreme, and the tide is still
rolling on, Dahomey being submerged yes
terday, as Ashantee will be submerged to-
morrow. Twenty years hence no black will
be able to live happily save by consent of
some white people, and the responsibility
assumed by the latter will be complete.
and, We are compelled to admit, most ter
rible. They must, therefore, think out
what 1t means, and discover some method
by which they can reconcile the races
that is, can enable them to live together
to the advantage of both, or at all events
without direct deterioration to either. The
method has not been found yet: all expert
ments, SO far, having proved partial or
total failures.
Slavery must be accounted among the lat
ter, for it fcssilized the blacks and democrat
lied the whites, produced no reconciliation
had little educative effect, and socially was
so unsuccessful that it was by a sort Of con-
sensus of white humanity given UP. Black
independence. besides being an admission of
white failure, works badly. old history, as
we'll as the records of Hayti and Liberia in
modern times, both proving that while indi-
powers. the race as a whole requires white
guidance and control TO enable IL to adj
vance. Equality does not succeed either. 1t
is being tried in the Southern States Of the
Union, and 1t bids fair to produce a race
war Of the most terrible kind, while even
now IL produces cordially in the governed,
and a base and tricky hypocrisy in those
who govern. We. who are Abolitionists Of
the stronger type, who would treat the slave
trade as piracy and slaveholding as an
offense, warned the North that in giving the
sake of mere logic, an experiment OF ex-
treme rashness. The vote was, however,
given, and proved worthless. The black
man was not competent to govern ana tne
to do 1T. He was deprived OF his vote by
force applied in ways that produced ex-
cessive cruelty and injustice, and severed
the two races worse than ever slavery nau
done; but force. as usual. settled nothing.
SOUTH CAROLINA PLAN.
No security Is possible where half the
population is under arms to prevent the
other half from exercising its legal rights
and the whites of the Southern States
are now seeking to disfranchise the blacks
by legal means. They cannot alter the
Constitution, but they can. they think,
make it inoperat tive, and a convention is
now sitting in South Carolina to devise the
means. The favorite plan of the conven-
ton. which will, 1t is said, be adopted. is
a very mean one. 1t is to disfranchise all
illiterate voters, and hand over to a State
officer the right of deciding whether any
one who claims to be literate really is
SO. That officer, 1t Is admitted, Will have
secret instructions to admit whites, but
not blacks, and so the whole race will
cease to claim the suffrage and will be
legally disfranchised. That is trickery, not
s~tatesmanship, but we see reason to fear
that it will be initiated in the colonies of
South Africa, where already the question
may rely on it. the white race, once close
ly pressed in its interests or its pride, will
submit to no government but it's own.
There IS no place on earth where fifty
thousand Englishmen consent to foreign
rule and we may take it as certain that
the obedience which they refuse to Dutch
men and Spaniards they will not concede
Gus or however civilized" The white race
as a race will obey no other, whatever
happens. There will be perpetual discord,
of local civil war. and the end will be either
white withdrawal, or more probably an
angry and sullen submission on the part
of the blacks. almost as fatal to true civili-
zation as civil war itself. We do not be-
lieve. in spite of the recoil in German and
French opinion. that slavery will ever be
tried again. and we hope that economic
avert the expulsion en- masse which was
the Spanish plan, and which De Tocque-
Vile feared would be the end in the North
Is 1t impossible to discover a principle or
theory of government under which the two
colors can live together, and yet observe the
two essential conditions without which there
can be no progress that the black man shall
be free and contented: and that the white
man shall have the guidance OF him? In
comparably the best system. of course, is
the Indian, which is the impartial rule over
both colors of an enlightened but despotic
committee. delegated and controlled by a
wise and Christian government far away;
but that method. which is in an extraor-
binary degree vivifying, is in most places
now inapplicable. We want a principle on
which Republicans can work: and we be-
lieve that the hope which would be most
fruitful is that the black people should be
declared to be foreign immigrants. guests
Of the State. entitled to the benefit of every
ample, but debarred from political power
and from sitting on juries. which latter. in
deed, in mixed cases ought to be superseded
by properly qualified magistrates and
judges. This principle. honestly acted on,
would leave all power for a time in the
hands of the white men. without violence
ana WITHOUT tflckefy, ana all the tights IN
the possession of the black men which they
are able to exercise wisely. To say they
would be oppressed by such a rule Is not
true. for they would be precisely in the po-
sition Of the majority of Englishmen before
1892. a position found to be perfectly COM
patible with much happiness, and a fairly
rapid progress in civilization.
OBJECTIONS DISCUSSED.
1t would, of course. De a condition OF the
system that the Legislature should not pass
caste laws, should not impose taxation on
any basis except ability to pay. and should
not accept any labor code not applicable to
all alike. The black men, II aggrieved,
could then strike. just as the Italian work.
men do in New York, and the question of
industrial position would get itself settled
by. fair competition. There would be plenty
Of trouble, no doubt, of different kinds: but
the fact and the theory would be brought
into accord, and the discredita5le trickery
of granting political powers with one hand,
to take them away with the other. would
be done away with. The superior compe
tence of the white man. which. for the
present, is undeniable, would be legally ac-
knowledged; while nothing would he de-
manded of the black man not accorded by
course. that the black man would resent
his legal inferiority.' but We do not find
that the mass of white women i'm the States
or i'm South Africa resent theirs, and do not
believe that the black is, at heart. so blind
to what he feels. as regards all black men
but himself, to be a self-evident truth. We
want, in fact, first of all, to be done with
living about the matter. The black man has
exactly the same right to happiness. liberty
and the pursuit OF knowledge as the white
man. but he has not the same right to gov
ern because he is not so capable of doing
so. Whether he will become capable We do
NOT know nor does ANYBODY else. The exDeri-