Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/44

 the Americans when they liberated the slaves during and after the Civil War. It has the two great merits of creating a respect for the lower race among the higher one, and of soothing the lower one by the feeling that in all that touches the rights of private life they are treated with strict justice.

When we pass to the sphere of politics more debatable questions emerge. Equality of rights might seem to be here also that which is fairest and most likely to make for unity and peace. But the Backward race may be really unfit to exercise political power, whether from ignorance, or from an indifference that would dispose it to sell its votes, or from a propensity to sudden and unreasoning impulses. The familiar illustration of the boy put to drive a locomotive engine might in some communities be no extreme way of describing the risks a democracy runs when the suffrage is granted to a large mass of half-civilized men.

Those who rule subject races on despotic methods, as the Russians rule Transcaucasia and the English India, or as the Hispano-American minorities virtually rule the native Indians in most of the so-called republics of Central and South America, do not realize all the difficulties that arise in a democracy. The capital instance is afforded by the history of the Southern States since the Civil War. Those States have passed through four stages. The first was that of leaving the political status of the coloured people to be dealt with by State laws, coupled with a measure of military authority. This proved unsatisfactory; so a second stage was ushered in by the grant to the coloured