BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES.`

SEASON OF 1894.

PRELUDE IV.

THE FIENDISHNESS OF CASTE-BISHOP POTTER ON LIBERIA.

At the 238th Boston Monday Lecture there was present the usual crowded and eager audience. The Rev. Dr. Plumb presided, and the Rev. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin offered prayer.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY.

This is the eighty-fourth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Where is he now? He is with our other martyrs in the world into which all men haste. He and they are with God, and we are with God. We shall ourselves very soon hear the roll-call at the end of that supplementary battle which it has been the will of Providence that we should fight, following the heroes of the Civil War. What do they think and what, so far as man may be permitted to penetrate the divine purpose, does God think of our duty to the Tropics, the colored races, and especially of their relations to that dominant portion of the human family to which we belong? We should care more for the opinion of that innumerable host to which we are so soon to be gathered than for the opinion of any or all who are left on the earth. We go hence, and one of our supreme purposes ought to be to be ready to give in peace an account of our political stewardship when we sit with the innumerable company of martyrs before the great White Throne.

PROSPECTS OF THE TROPICS.

The next great act in the unrolling drama of human history seems likely to be the commercial utilization of the Tropics. When the Temperate Zones fill up, the Tropics will be thrown

open as never before. Modern means of intercommunication will make tropical transportation easy. Commercial exigencies will make it necessary. But the Tropics as a whole will never be the seat of large white colonies.

What, then, are the large, indisputable facts which exhibit the duty of high civilization face to face the problems that are sure to arise in the Tropics?

I. The best lands available in the Torrid Zone will be utilized as soon as they can be made to pay better than the best available in the Temperate Zones.

2. They cannot be utilized by white labor. It is notorious that in the Tropics average experience has proved that the labor of a white man is worth only about half that of a black man.

3.

These available lands in the Tropics must be utilized chiefly by colored labor.

There is, therefore, an inevitably great industrial future for the colored populations in the permanently hot climates of the globe.

5. Whether there shall be politically and socially and religiously a great future for the colored populations, depends largely on themselves and on their friends among the white populations.

6. The temptation of whites who officer the colored labor will be to keep wages low and workingmen docile if not servile.

Hence the caste of ruling whites may be expected, as human nature now stands, to oppose more or less the intellectual and religious education and the social, political and commercial advancement of the colored working classes.

8. This will be contrary to Christian principle and all sound standards of ordinary morals.

9. It will also be contrary to the best established inculcations of political economy, for the development of a country is far more rapid under intelligent and free labor than under servile labor and caste.

IO. The fiendishness of caste is, therefore, to be resisted in the name of both Christianity and political economy. VOL. XIII.—NO. 76

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II.

The struggle for the overthrow of caste is likely to be severe in all tropical and sub-tropical regions, and especially so in the northernmost parts of Australia and in the southernmost in the United States, because in these regions the problem is complicated with a wide suffrage.

12.

Wherever the colored populations first attain education and property and develop capacity enough for safe selfgovernment, there the leaders are likely to be found who will conduct the colored races to a better future.

13. Nowhere else on the globe are white and colored populations locked together under broad suffrage as in the United States. Political necessity is laid upon this Republic as upon no other country, to educate its colored citizens and do justice to them.

14.

Therefore, the brightest star of hope for Africa and the Tropics in general, and for the heated islands of the seas, hangs not over the Congo, nor the Zambezi, nor the Nile, but over the United States.

SERVILE LABOR IN HOT CLIMATES.

It is the notorious fact that it is very difficult to unite under one form of political government, especially if broad suffrage is the basis of it, the colored and the white populations. England has almost given up hope of a genial union of the Australian colonies, simply because in the northern parts of Australia, which project far into the Tropics, caste already has such power that it has introduced a servile population. John G. Paton says that thousands of the natives of the New Hebrides, his parish in the Pacific, have been taken by processes little better than those of piracy, and farmed out on Australian plantations, their lives nearly squeezed out of them in poorly requited toil, and then in their old age they are thrown back, not exactly into the sea, but into advanced years of penury and want, and sometimes of positive starvation. The labor traffic in the Pacific is not slavery, but it ends in something like peonage and servitude.

All around the world, in the permanently hot climates, under the influence of commercial greed, the tendency is to

introduce cheap manual labor by colored populations. The scheme of the great employers in hot climates is to keep labor This is wholly contrary to our notions here in

at a low level. the North.

A SECTIONAL SWINDLE.

Even in the United States, on the Gulf, many employers call for cheap labor and almost servile conditions on the part of the laboring class. At the same time, the whole population is counted as a basis of federal representation. Thus it happens that the vote of a white man in the South weighs three or four times as much as the vote of a white man in the North. This not only creates unjust representation, but is a very gross injustice to labor on the Gulf. It is an injustice, not merely to the colored populations, but also to us. How long are we to sit still under the disproportionateness of representation in Congress? The South makes no apology for suppressing the negro vote in counties almost countless. It is not suppressed everywhere, but as a general rule it is suppressed wherever it would be a majority if fairly counted. Mr. Blaine pointed out repeatedly, the language of the new amendments to the constitution is such that unless you can say that a State has limited suffrage by a law, unless you can point to some enactment on the statute books abridging the political power of voters, you cannot cut down the representation of a State in Congress, even if it suppresses the colored vote. If any State should pass a law imposing upon colored citizens tests not imposed upon whites, then you could cut down the representation of that State. But while a State limits negro suffrage by irregular methods, and does not pass a law actually limiting it, you cannot cut down the representation of the State in Congress. Our national politics, therefore, are in the meshes of a prodigious sectional swindle.

REPEAL OF FEDERAL ELECTIONS LAW.

Congress, under Democratic leadership, is about to repeal the Federal Elections Law. For some thirty years we have had a certain amount of protection against fraud at the ballot box in our northern cities and on southern plantations. We

knew very well when the war closed that more or less federal supervision would be necessary to secure purity of elections. In the South and in the North the regulations adopted applied largely to cities, and, at the time, the cities to which the law had application were four times more numerous in the North than in the South. Nevertheless, this was called a measure tending to humiliate the southern section of the Republic. Senator Hoar has said that whenever there is a loop-hole in our laws concerning the national suffrage, there is a political party that will be sure to take advantage of the outlet. I do not care to discuss partisan politics here, but I for one am not satisfied with the repeal of the regulations which have enabled us to put down fraudulent voting to a very large extent in New York city in my native State [applause]. New York to-day is politically one of the most corrupt municipalities on the face of the earth and dominated by a Tammany Hall that is one of the nethermost levels of political perdition. [Laughter and applause.] I should say the Democratic party means to keep together, by force or by fraud, the Solid South. It can now be made more solid than ever and may be united more mischievously than ever with the corrupt vote in northern municipalities. Common sense protests against running such enormous risks with our suffrage, loose enough at the best. Let us have a reading test applied to both North and South. I am for no discrimination against the South, but I would apply to every part of the land any law needed to secure purity of elections.

LYNCHINGS IN THE SOUTH.

The fiendishness of caste is exhibited in the horrible fact that lynchings are yet on the increase.

You will do me the justice to remember that this platform has been outspoken on the subject of the barbaric atrocities committed upon our colored population in the Southern States. I had the honor of introducing here, some years ago, a colored school teacher who stood very high in the Boston University, and is now a young lawyer at the Suffolk bar. I had the honor, last year, of introducing here Miss Ida B. Wells who