den.
Eraser's Magazine, August, 1878.]--an official in the government of
Liberia. We are mistaken, says this excellent observer, in regarding
Africa as a land of a homogeneous population, and in confounding the
tribes in a promiscuous manner. There are negroes and negroes. "The
numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more be
regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia or
Europe can be so regarded;" and we are not to expect the civilization of
Africa to be under one government, but in a great variety of States,
developed according to tribal and race affinities. A still greater
mistake is this:

"The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of negro
improvement and the future of Africa is in supposing that the negro is
the European in embryo, in the undeveloped stage, and that when,
by-and-by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, he
will become like the European; in other words, that the negro is on the
same line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, but
infinitely in the rear . . . . This view proceeds upon the assumption
that the two races are called to the same work, and are alike in
potentiality and ultimate development, the negro only needing the element
of time, under certain circumstances, to become European. But to our mind
it is not a question between the two races of inferiority or superiority.
There is no absolute or essential superiority on the one side, or
absolute or essential inferiority on the other side. It is a question of
difference of endowment and difference of destiny. No amount of training
or culture will make the negro a European. On the other hand, no lack of
training or deficiency of culture will make the European a negro. The two
races are not moving in the same groove, with an immeasurable distance
between them, but on parallel lines. They will never meet in the plane of
their activities so as to coincide in capacity or performance. They are
not identical, as some think, but unequal; they are distinct, but
equal--an idea that is in no way incompatible with the Scripture truth
that God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

The writer goes on, in a strain that is not mere fancy, but that involves
one of the truths of inequality, to say that each race is endowed with
peculiar talents; that the negro has aptitudes and capacities which the
world needs, and will lack until he is normally tra