But it has been exactly this that
has brought out into such vivid contrast the conduct of the British
statesman, loudly professing to be unprejudiced as to colour, and
fair and humane, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the
dealings of the politicians of America, who had, as a matter of fact,
sucked in aversion and contempt towards the Negro together with their
mother's milk. Of course no sane being could expect that feelings so
deeply ingrained and nourished could be rooted out by logic or by any
legislative enactment. But, indeed, it is sublimely creditable to
[123] the American Government that, whatever might be the personal
and private sentiments of its individual members as regards race,
palmam ferat qui meruit--"let him bear the palm who has deserved it"-
-has been their motto in dealing generally with the claims of their
Ethiopic fellow-citizens. Hence it is that in only twenty-five years
America can show Negro public officers as thick as blackberries,
while Mr. Froude can mention only Mr. Justice Reeves in FIFTY years
as a sample of the "exceptional" progress under British auspices of a
man of African descent! Verily, if in fifty long years British
policy can recognize only one single exception in a race between
which and the white race there is no original or congenital
difference of capacity, the inference must be that British policy has
been not only systematically, but also too successfully, hostile to
the advancement of the Ethiopians subject thereto; while the "fair
field and no favour" management of the strong-minded Americans has,
by its results, confirmed the culpability of the English policy in
its relation to "subject races.
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