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gions, or be reduced to perish of famine and that his labour is unskilful, uncertain, and the diseases which accompany it. Freedom costly. Indolence— resignation to the dolce as yet has proved but a poor boon to the far niente contentedness with a merely great bulk of the negroes; and Americans, animal existence-thoughtlessness and heedboth of the North and the South, who have lessness of the morrow, and all that it may devoted attention to the subject, are of opin- bring forth- and the want of guidance and ion that the census returns of the decennial direction, are the faults of the negro charperiod from 1860 to 1870 will show, so far acter; and, worse than all, they are faults as the whole Union is concerned, a great so deeply engrained as to appear all but indimunition of the negro race as compared eradicable. A race like this is not well with the previous period from 1850 to 1860 suited - leaving colour out of the question -and in the South, more particularly, a to the requirements of the United States. diminution of at least a million. Small- America, and all those portions of it that pox, overcrowding, intemperance, and are not possessed by the Spaniards, and hopeless poverty have been at work among the mixed race of Spaniards and Indians them since the pen of Mr. Lincoln and the that encumber Mexico and the beautiful refortunes of war made them masters of their gions still farther south, is pre-eminently the own destiny; and child-murder, a crime ut- land of hard work. No people, not even terly unknown and without motive among the British, labour so hard as the Amerithe mothers in the days of slavery, has so cans; and for the idle man black, white, greatly increased as to have attracted the red, or yellow-there is neither room nor notice of the whole Southern people. tolerance. The popular saying, "Root, hog

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or die!" tersely, if roughly, expresses the American feeling, that he who will not work cannot be allowed to live; and if the chronic laziness of the negroes, unspurred to exertion by the strong hand of authority that formerly kept them in accord with the civilization around them, causes their degeneration into hopeless pauperism- the antagonism between the industrious whites and the idle blacks will take a severer form than it has ever yet assumed in American history.*

The short and as yet unfavourable trial that has been made of the freed negro as a labourer since the return of peace, has led the Southern planters, or such of them as have not been utterly ruined by the war, to turn their attention to the importation of coolie-labour - a fact of itself sufficient to show how precarious and unsatisfactory is the position of the African race, and to im

The time seems to be coming when the great and rich republic of the United States will have to bethink itself whether it has done its whole duty by the black man in giving him liberty and a vote; and whether the negroes, like the Red Indians, might not advantageously be set apart in reserves, to govern themselves, under the protection of the Federal Government. The sea-islands on the low alluvial coasts of the Atlantic between Virginia and Florida, which yield the finest long-staple cotton in the world, but are wholly uninhabitable by the white people during the summer months, are particularly well-adapted for settlement and cultivation by the negroes. The malaria that is fatal to the Caucasian has no effect upon the African; and these islands, if parcelled out in cotton plantations among negro proprietors, after compensation to present owners unable to reside in them except during the short winter, might maintain a very large proportion of the now aimless, destitute, almost helpless freedmen, who to be religious, but who are far more pagan than swarm in every great city between Wash-either they or their Northern friends imagine, sometimes assume a superiority to the white race. One ington and New Orleans. Texas, a State as of their hymns reaches us, as we write, from South large as France with a population of some- Carolina. The following stanzas will show what what less than half a million by the census they think of themselves quoad the next world:of 1860, and that possibly will be found to contain three-quarters of a million by the census of 1870-might be divided into three or four States of the Union, of which one might be set apart as a reserve, on which the negroes, under the most favourable auspices, might prove to the world, if the fact be possible, that they are as fairly amenable to all the influences of civilization as the Caucasians. It is evident that, as a labourer, the free negro is not in much request at the South, on the three grounds

The religious negroes, and negroes pretending

"We's be nearer to the Lard

Den de white folkes, and dey know it;
See de glory-gate onbarred —
Walk in, darkeys, past de guard!
Bet yer a dollar He wont close it!
"Walk in, darkeys, troo de gate;

Hark, de kullered angels holler:
Go 'way, white folkes, you're too late!
We's de winning kuller! Wait
Till de trumpet blows to foller!
"Halleloojah! tanks to praise!
Long enuff we've borne our crosses;
Now we's de sooperior race,
And, wid Gorramighty's grace,
We's going to hebben afore de bosses!"

press upon the minds of the leading states- | provocation- who lived in their masters' men of the Union the necessity of looking houses all their lives, and reckoned themat the negro question fully and fairly. Lib- selves, as far as affection went, a part, erty, no doubt, is sweet, alike to the white though a humble one, of the family. In the and the black; but possibly the poor blacks, Northern and Western States no service of if the worst comes to the worst, and their this kind was to be had. The native-born numbers dwindle and dwine upon the teem-white American scorned domestic service, ing soil which they were once compelled to cultivate, with rich plenty as their reward, may come to the conclusion that life itself is something even sweeter than liberty; and that the paternal government which gave them the one boon, ought at least to provide them with the means of maintaining the other. This problem, difficult as it may be, ought not to prove insoluble to a people with such immense territorial resources as the United States, and with such a character for philanthropy to lose as the Federal Government acquired by its abolition of slavery. The great impediment in the way, at least for the present, lies in the political necessities of the party that elected Mr. Lincoln to the chief magistracy that carried on the fratricidal war to its bitter end—that placed General Grant in Mr. Lincoln's chair—and that still aspires to rule the Union. To this party the negro vote in the Southern States is absolutely essential for the maintenance of its majority in the Federal Legislature; and it will, therefore, not very willingly inaugurate or even support a project for the deportation of so many useful pawns on the political chessboard to any single territory, where their votes, instead of being spread over eleven States, would be concentrated into one. But as the problem, though a political one now, may become a social one hereafter, and as the negroes themselves may possibly be induced to record their votes for the opposing party, that would give them bread rather than a stone, it is not impossible that the Government of the United States may, at some future time, be induced, by motives of humanity and true statesmanship-higher than party laws or necessity -to do for the imported African and his descendants what it has already commenced to do for such poor remnants of the aboriginal Americans as have not been, in Yankee parlance, "improved off the face of the earth" by the European races.

and neither man nor woman of that haughty breed would enter into it, though they would cheerfully undertake trade service as assistants in farms, shops or stores, or as millworkers. Domestic service was thus left mainly to the free negroes and to the immigrant Irish, neither of whom had any scruples in earning an honest penny by labour that an American born considered to be beneath his dignity. But the service, whether negro or Irish, was not pleasant to the employer. The Irish and the negroes would not work or associate together, so that the master, or "boss"-for the word master was held to be offensive in the free North by the free negroes as well as by the Irish, and was never employed- - had to choose of which colour he would compose his household attendants, and confine himself to it. There was but little difference between them. The Irish were generally very igno rant, and when they ceased to be ignorant they mostly became impertinent, and assumed airs of social equality which the people they were paid to wait upon could not brook. The negroes, too, were far from docile, and when smitten overmuch with the laziness inherent in their characters, could not be induced to work by the commands or entreaties which would have been imperative or irresistible with the same class of people at the South. The horrors of housekeeping in the great cities became in consequence something too great for delicate or fashionable ladies to encounter, and married people of moderate means were only too happy to escape from the annoyance and trouble by living in hotels and boarding-houses, where the servants, black and Irish, were under the control of people whose trade and business in life it was to govern and make the best of them. Of late years, however, a new race has introduced itself into America, to the great advantage of every community in The great social want of the United States which it has established itself- a race has always been, as it still is, a supply of which promises to supply domestic servants good domestic servants. Under the system far defter and more handy than the Southern of negro slavery, the Southern people had slaves, and that gives itself no airs of social the best servants in the world, servants or political equality to make its service who knew their work and their position-repulsive. The discovery of gold in Caliwho had no desire to ape the dress and be-fornia first led the teeming population of haviour of their masters and mistresses who were not liable to be discharged from service for petty faults, or on any ordinary

China to try their fortunes as immigrants into the new land of promise, and ever since that time there has been a constant

and daily-increasing influx of this people | Chinese, the way is comparatively short, into the North American continent. On and costs as little as a steerage passage the first arrival of the yellow race in San from Liverpool to New York. There is Francisco, the antagonism and antipathy of every inducement for the Chinaman to leave the vulgar whites were furiously excited his over-crowded native country, and settle, against them. They were subjected to temporarily or permanently, in that other every kind of indignity and insult. They flowery land which woos him across the Pawere robbed, assaulted, and sometimes mur-cific; and there is also every inducement for dered; and if the murder were committed his own countrymen, already settled and without white witnesses, there was no pun- prospering in America, to organize means ishment for the murderer, because the evi- for bringing him over and paying his pasdence of the yellow men was not admissible sage on the security of his future earnings. in a court of justice, and the murder re- Pay the passage of a European to any part mained unproved for lack of competent of America on the like security, and the evidence. The poor Chinamen, industrious, probability is that the European will disapfrugal, abstemious, ingenious, indefatigable, pear in the whirl and vortex and be no more and peaceable as they were, seemed to heard of, as a debtor. But with the yellow excite the animosity of the lower order of man the case is different. They keep faith. whites, firstly on account of their colour, Wherever they may go, and into whatever and secondly, perhaps mainly, because they districts they may spread themselves in could live and thrive where an Anglo-Saxon search of bread and the modest fortune that or Celt would starve, and because, as a suffices them, they honourably report themconsequence, their competition tended to selves to the agency that speculated upon keep down the rate of wages. The atroci- them, and never fail to pay back the full ties committed on this deserving people at amount, with interest, of the expenses inlast became so serious and so scandalous, curred to bring them from the Chinese that the upper order of intelligent white shores to those of California. They have, men resolved to "abate the nuisance." too, the immense advantage over the Irish They have a way of doing such things in immigration, of being skilled labourers. America which is apt to be very effective They can not only till the soil, cut down the when fairly and earnestly entered into; and forest-trees, and do hard porter's work, and the "Society for the Protection of the Chi- the work of navvies, but they can pernese Immigrants," established in San Fran- form the most delicate manipulations of arcisco, very speedily assumed such propor- tificial work. They are jewellers, tailors, tions as convinced the roughs, rowdies, and shoemakers, basketmakers, cabinetmakers, blackguards of Europe, who had congre- masons, gardeners, florists, vine-dressers, gated in California, that it would be their cigar-makers, lucifer-match makers, and wisest policy to leave the Chinamen alone. first-rate getters-up of fine linen, as well as Street quarrels between the Asiatics and the cleanliest, most economical, and most the Europeans sometimes occur even now, skilful of cooks and waiters. So highly are in which the Irish are for the most part the they esteemed in every capacity to which aggressors; but the yellow men, with the they please to devote themselves, and so free real and intelligent public opinion of the are they from the vices most disagreeable in place to back them, manage not only to hold the Irish and the negroes, when they act as their own, but to put their brutal assailants domestic servants, that a considerable deso wholly in the wrong as to convince them mand has arisen for their services in the that the sooner they reconcile themselves to western and middle, as well as in the cities the fact that the Asiatics are welcome, and of the Atlantic seaboard. Under the new will be supported by the law, the better for régime inaugurated by the civil war, and as their own security and comfort. The yel-its only result, except the union of States low men, as labourers, are in the majority in California, and the disaffected Irish and low English in that State will have to succumb, as is the practice and the law in a republic, where the minority has to keep the subordinate place until such time as, by legal means and the progress of opinion, it can grow into a majority.

An Irishman or an Englishman, especially if he come direct from Europe, has a long and a costly road to travel before he can reach the Golden City; whereas, for the

the imperative law imposed upon all the States, that no man otherwise eligible to the rights and privileges of citizenship shall be excluded from the enjoyment of those rights and privileges by reason of his race or colour-it is probable, now that the first shock of ethnological antagonism has broken and been softened in California, that no serious, if any, difficulties will arise between the men of European and of Asiatic blood. The Federal Government has solemnly bound itself to that of China by the

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treaty concluded with Mr. Burlingame, to planters prefer coolies to negroes, and can
do the same impartial justice to the Chi- induce the coolies to serve them, there is
nese in America as the Americans in China nothing to prevent the bargain between the
expect to receive at the hands of the Gov- two from being completed, subject to the
ernment of Pekin. The question of the supervision of the Federal Government,
suffrage will not be a difficult one, even if it that cannot suffer slavery in fact, however
should arise. The Chinese in America are modified in form, or disguised by theory,
birds of passage only. They take no in- to be reintroduced into America. On this
terest either in the politics or in the religion point President Grant, in his recently-de-
of the new land to which they have trans-livered message, recommends legislation
ferred their energies, and their only desire on the part of Congress. It is possible that
in visiting it is to remain a few years, make watchfulness is required, not so much,
money, and go home to die among their
own people. When a Chinaman dies in
America he is not buried there, for his
friends, however poor, manage, as a sacred
duty, to transport his remains to his own
land, that the dearest wish of all Chinamen
may be realized, and that his bones may
rest among the bones of his ancestors. This
is not merely custom, but religion, and it
helps to remove from the minds of the na-
tive Americans any fear that the Chinese
immigration, however multitudinous, will
act as a disturbing force in American poli-
tics. It is estimated that there are about
65,000 Chinamen now in California, and
upwards of 90,000 in the adjoining States
and territories on the Pacific.

The question of the importation of coolies to replace the negroes in the cotton, rice, and sugar plantations, is a social one, into which the antipathies and antagonism of race do not enter. If the Southern

perhaps, to guard the poor coolies from slavery on American soil, as to prevent them from being kidnapped on their own, and deported against their will, to be sold into servitude for wages that are insufficient. Slavery is defunct in America for the black race, and will not and cannot be resuscitated for the yellow. So far there is nothing to fear either from the neglect or the action of the American Government. The problem is not how to deal with the yellow men who are coming, but with the black men, who ought never to have been permitted to come as slaves, or encouraged to come as freemen. It is a difficult one under every aspect in which it can be regarded. It will greatly depend upon the negro himself whether it shall have a happier solution than that which has resulted in the case of the fast-disappearing aborigines of America.

be happy to dispose of it in favour of another devout man. As I did not take the hint, we continued our examination of the reliquary. I was next shown the comb of the cock that crowed when Peter denied his Master, then the staff with which Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea, and afterwards the beard of Noah. My cicerone took care to inforin me, every now and again, that, in consideration of my being a

A VISIT TO THE CHURCH OF ST. AUGUSTINE. | this gift from the angel by his prayers, and my A Hungarian Roman Catholic clergyman, at guide informed me, with a look of deep signifipresent at Rome, writes to the Presburg Ga-cance, that he knew a pious man, the possessor zette, a curious account of a visit he paid to the of a feather from this angelic wing, who would church of St. Augustine in that city. "After walking for half an hour," says the writer, "through streets uglier and dirtier than any that could be found in our Hungarian towns, I reached at last the church of St. Augustine. When I entered there appeared to be no one in the building, but an old barefooted sacristan soon appeared, and offered (of course for a small consideration) to let me see the marvellous relics the church possessed. Having conducted me pious man,' I could obtain a small portion of into the sacristy, he showed me on a rich velvet these invaluable relics at a very moderate price." cushion inclosed in a small case, the cord with The Presburg Gazette adds to this letter, by which Judas Iscariot had hanged himself. My way of postscript, - Our worthy clergyman does cicerone maintained the relic to be authentic, not seem to have been shown what, in our opinand I could not hurt his feelings by an expres-ion, is the pearl of the collection in question; it sion of doubt. Another glass case contains a is one of the steps of the ladder on which Jacob, wing of the Archangel Gabriel. I learned on in his dream, saw the heavenly hosts ascending inquiry that Pope Gregory VII. had obtained and descending.

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"Enter the conspirator at last! What have you been plotting downstairs with papa and his grace of Dunstanburgh ?" was the salutation of his out-spoken cousin. Here have I just been speaking to an old friend of yours, whom Rushbrook picked up somewhere and brought along with him, and he seemed positively put out when I told him you had vanished. I assured him your engagements barely left you time for food, to say nothing of friends; that months had passed since I entrapped you last into a tete-à-tete. But, as he didn't seem half satisfied, I referred him back to Rushbrook, and Rushbrook discovered you were closeted with the Duke; but whether the Duke was securing you for the next Cabinet, or canvassing for a seat at your Turkish Board -that's what you call it, isn't it?he couldn't pretend to say. I don't know which would be the more flattering; but I hope devoutly it was the former, and so I am sure does Miss Childersleigh."

Lady Alice, in many respects, was the very counterpart of her brother. Few people called her pretty; but her features could light up surprisingly when she talked, and as hers was anything but a retiring nature, and she was never quiet when she could possibly help it, she managed to make the very most of what looks she had. Her mother, having failed in persuading her to tone down her manners to something of the maternal repose, had resigned herself placidly to being scandalized by them.

"You show all your usual penetration, Alice. One or the other it was of course, and equally of course my lips are sealed. I quite forgot to get the Duke's permission to talk it over with you. I always am overlooking something."

"Well, I suppose we must restrain our curiosity, until it is satisfied by time or the papers. How I do wish you would take to politics, Hugh! In a few years we should have you Premier, giving papa the Garter, and Rushbrook the Governor-Generalship of India, or something of that sort."

Maude, in the meantime, had kept her eyes steadily on his face. Possibly, the interest she had taken in reading that particular volume may have helped her to understand it. She may have penetrated to

his preoccupation through his seeming unconcern, for she became abstracted herself, and answered more gravely than was in keeping with Lady Alice's rattle.

66

From what I know of him, Lady Alice, our best advice would be wasted. But I candidly avow my grovelling ideas, and I think even the privilege of giving away ribbons may be bought too dear. I don't think Mr. Childersleigh very likely to lose his head in climbing; but it seems to me it's safer making quite sure of your position on one ladder, before being lured by a willo'-the-wisp to put your foot upon another and a higher one."

"How unpleasantly and eloquently practical you are, Miss Childersleigh. I must say I'm disappointed in finding an enemy where I looked for an ally. Well, now my only hope of help is from Miss Winter."

Lucy blushed. The shyness that had worn itself away in the familiar atmosphere of "The Cedars" was still apt to reclaim its prey when she went out into the world. She felt ill-assured, too, in her sensitive consciousness of the ambiguous circumstances under which she had come out. Do what Maude might, Lucy could never shake herself free from the idea that she was an encumbrance her friend dragged about with her in her good-nature. She turned her great hazel eyes on Hugh, who was looking at her half amused; but when she spoke, it was with a bashful earnestness that fixed his attention somehow, although there was very little in the words.

"I daresay Maude may be right. but it seems to me a man might stay where he was for life, were he to see a will-o'-the-wisp in every light that signalled him onwards."

"Thank you for so much, Miss Winter. Your sympathies are with me rather than Miss Childersleigh, and that's enough. I daresay Hugh is longing to tell us we're all chasing wills-o'-the-wisp at this very moment, and that my brain is just the place to start them. But look, Hugh, here comes that very persevering friend of yours, Captain Barrington."

Hugh started and turned. The name carried him back again to his old life. There, to be sure, was Barrington in person, and approaching in a state of excitement very unusual with him. Although the words of their greeting were commonplace enough, we may venture to say no warmer hand-grip had been exchanged that evening in Hestercombe House.

"So here you are, Barrington, come to town just as every one else is leavingevery one, at least, who is not tied by business as I am."

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