Southern negro greater
than those in the way of the average foreign immigrant. The emancipated
negro is at least as industrious and thrifty as the Celt, takes more
pride in self-support, is far more eager for education, and has fewer
vices. It is impossible to name any standard of requisites for the full
rights of citizenship which will give a vote to the Celt and exclude the
negro.

Much as has been written on this point, Mr. Owen has yet some
astonishing facts to contribute. He shows, for instance, by the official
statements, that, amidst the great distress produced in the city of St.
Louis at the beginning of the war, by the gathering of white and black
refugees from all parts of the State, when ten thousand persons received
public aid, only two out of that whole vast number were of negro blood.
These two were all who applied, one being lame, the other bedridden, and
both women. He shows, upon similar authority, that the free colored
people of Louisiana, under serious civil disabilities, are, on the
average, richer, by seven and a half per cent., than the people of the
Northern States. Their average wealth in 1860 was five hundred and
twenty dollars, while the average wealth in the loyal Free States is
only four hundred and eighty-four dollars. Such facts show how utterly
gratuitous is the frequent assumption that the emancipated slave does
not sufficiently know the value of a dollar.

Upon some disputed points Mr. Owen does not, perhaps, make his facts
quite cover his inferences, as, for instance, on the vexed question of
the vigor and vitality of the mulatto, upon which the more extended
observations of the last three years have as yet shed little light. It
is the same with the whole obscure problem of amalgamation; indeed, he
slips into an absolute contradiction, in pronouncing judgment rather too
hastily here. "I believe," he says, "that the effect of general
emancipation will be to discourage amalgamation. It is rare in Canada."
(p. 219.) But, however it may be in Canada, he has already admitted,
four pages before, that "the proportion of mulattoes among the free
colored is much greater than among the slaves," which is, doubt less,
true, except, perhaps, in a few large cities of the South. It is a
subject of common remark that the Southern colored regiments are
generally of far darker complexion than those recruited at the North,
and this is inexplicable except on the supposition that freedom, even
more than