are numerically inferior to the
blacks, not, as in America, in a few particular areas (the three States
of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana), but all over the
country. In the whole United States the whites are to the blacks as ten
to one; in Africa south of the Zambesi it is the blacks who are ten to
one to the whites. Or if we compare the four South African Colonies and
Republics with the fifteen old slave States, the blacks are in the
former nearly four times as numerous as the whites, and the whites in
the latter twice as numerous as the blacks. In point of natural capacity
and force of character the Bantu races are at least equal, probably
superior, to the negroes brought from Africa to North America, most of
whom seem to have come from the Guinea coasts. But in point of education
and in habits of industry the American negroes are far ahead of the
South African; for the latter have not been subjected to the industrial
training of nearly two centuries of plantation life or domestic service,
while comparatively few have had any industrial contact with white
workmen, or any stimulation like that which the grant of the suffrage
after the War of Secession has exercised upon a large section of the
American negroes, even in places where they have not been permitted to
turn their legal rights to practical account. The American negroes are,
moreover, all nominally Christians; the South African Kafirs nearly all
heathens. Yet, after allowing for these and other minor points of
contrast, the broad fact remains that in both countries we see two races
in very different stages of civilisation dwelling side by side, yet not
mingling nor likely to mingle. In both countries one race rules over
the other. The stronger despises and dislikes the weaker; the weaker
submits patiently to the stronger. But the weaker makes in education and
in property a progress which will some day bring it much nearer to the
stronger than it is now.

The social and political troubles which the juxtaposition of the two
races has caused in North America, and which have induced many Americans
to wish that it were possible to transport the whole seven millions of
Southern negroes back to the Niger or the Congo, have as yet scarcely
shown themselves in South Africa. Neither in the British Colonies nor in
the Boer Republics is there any cause for present apprehension. The
coloured people are submissive and not resentful. They have, moreover, a
certai