shall suffer no other."* It would be unjust to see in such utterances, caused by a high consciousness of his power, absolutist tendencies on the part of the Emperor. He is a constitutional prince and has rigidly respected parliamentary rights. But in a time when the principle of authority and order is undermined in many ways, the youthful Sovereign feels that he is the centre of monarchical discipline, without which the state can neither exist nor progress, and he is resolved to maintain his authority against Social Democrats as well as against interested coalitions of privileged classes and persons.

As a mortal man, the Emperor is certainly not infallible; he speaks well and frequently, and his impulsive nature sometimes leads him to utterances which he would avoid if his speeches had been carefully prepared, and which afterward are officially corrected. Yet even this fault is not without its merits. The Emperor's speeches captivate by the rich knowledge they display, by the lofty conception of his taste they indicate, and by the deepness of thought underlying them. Above all, you feel that this monarchical orator truly means what he says; his whole heart is in his words. Whatever may be his partial shortcomings, no one can doubt that he is animated by the single idea of promoting the happiness of all his subjects and the greatness of United Germany.

Taking all in all, we may say that the Emperor's short reign has been successful, that it bodes well for the future, and that at present there is perhaps no life more precious for Germany, as well as for Europe, than that of William II.

F. HEINRICH GEFFCKEN.

*It is said that these words were suggested by the ill-advised desire of the great Rhenish industrials, embodied in a poem of Emil Ritterhaus, that the Emperor should effect a reconciliation with Bismarck and call the Chancellor back to his former position, a hint which was rather ungraciously received.

THE COLORED RACE IN THE UNITED STATES.

THERE are several things which unite to give a peculiar interest to the statistics of the colored race in the United States. In the first place, we are here dealing with an element of the population whose presence in the land is due entirely to force. All the other elements of our population represent migrations, early or late, which were voluntary, but the blacks were originally brought into this country through high-handed, brutal, often barbarously cruel violence. It would be no strained supposition that but for the slave trade as, with all its horrors, it was carried on between 1620 and 1808, there would not be 75,000 Africans in the United States, whereas now we have 7,500,000.

In addition to the fact just noted, viz., that but for the slave trade the blacks would not have been here at all, we have, in the second place, the fact that the domestic institution of slavery caused this element of our population to be distributed within the country, prior to 1861, very differently from what it would have been had the blacks been left free to place themselves according to their own tastes and industrial aptitudes. Wherever the master went within the territory where slavery was protected by law he carried the slave, without reference to the latter's predilections; and the natural range of residence for the master was much greater than the natural range of residence for the slave. The former represented a race bred in northern latitudes, and was hence thoroughly at home on the mountain side or table land; while yet, by the privilege of his strain, he could, without danger or great inconvenience, move southward if his interests required. The latter, on the other hand, represented a race bred under tropical conditions, and could move up the mountain side or go northward only at a large sacrifice of vitality and force.

But it was not merely the will or the interests of the master class which caused a far wider distribution of the colored element than would have taken place in a state of freedom. In his effort

to escape from bondage, the black man made his way into regions whose climate and prevailing industries were, in almost the last degree, alien or hostile to him. Hence it came about that the close of the war found large bodies of this element of the population in positions which were highly abnormal.

In the third place, the abrupt conclusion of the slave trade in 1808 and the absence of any considerable immigration of colored people since that date, give a unique clearness and confidence to the statistical study of this element of our population. Substantially all of the 7,500,000 colored persons in the United States to-day are descended from the 700,000 women of this race found in the United States in 1810.

In the fourth place, while white blood has been, in some degree, mixed with colored, it has resulted, partly from the force of the old slave laws, by which the child followed the condition of the mother, and partly from the instinctive sentiments of the people, that all the descendants of those 700,000 colored women are still recognized and grouped together in the census. A man or a woman who is one quarter French or German, or even one half English, Irish, or Scotch, may not be known as such except by family friends; but a man or a woman who has a quarter, perhaps even only an eighth, of negro blood is still recognized as belonging to that race, and is so classed, not only in popular speech, but in the enumerations of the census.

The first census, in 1790, found the colored population of the country 757,208, constituting 19.3 per cent. of the total population. The census of 1810, two years after the abolition of the slave trade, found this element numbering 1,377,808, or 19 per cent. of the total population. Ever since the latter date the increase of the colored element has been less than that of the total population; and at each successive census the colored element has been found to constitute a smaller and still smaller share of the total population. In this last statement I assume a reasonable correction of the admitted defects of the census of 1870 in respect to the colored people of the South.

We do not yet know exactly what was the colored population of 1890 as found by the eleventh census. But the central office at Washington has, with truly remarkable promptitude,

given us the figures for all the late slave States and for the single free State of Kansas; communities which embraced fifteen sixteenths of this element of the population in 1880. So far, the rate of gain in the ten years intervening has been found to be 13.9 per cent., as against 24.86 per cent. for the entire population of the country. If we apply to the remainder of the colored population of 1880 the same ratio of increase which has been found to exist in that part which has been counted, we shall have the total for 1890 a little under seven and a half millions.

I have spoken of corrections to be made in the figures given for the colored population for 1870. The present census office has estimated the loss out of this element, at that time, to have been three quarters of a million. My own estimate has always placed that loss between three and four hundred thousand. Professor Newton, the eminent mathematician of Yale University, has recently computed it as about 550,000. Calling the loss 510,000, we should then have, in the following table, the statistical history of the colored race within the United States during the first hundred years of the nation's history:

TABLE I.-COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES.

Thus while the total population of the country has, during the century, increased sixteenfold, the colored element has increased but tenfold. In 1790 that element constituted nearly one fifth of the population; in 1840, but one sixth; in 1860, but one seventh; in 1890, less than one eighth. The increase per cent. * Partly estimated,

within that element itself has tended to a decline since 1810, alike by ten-year periods and by twenty-year periods; while the decline has been continuous by thirty-year periods from the beginning.

These references to the past of the colored race in the United States have been made mainly with a view to clearing the ground for reasonable conjectures regarding its future. What can be

said of this? In the first place, a glance at the foregoing table is sufficient to establish a strong probability that the movement there seen to have been so steadily in progress, during eighty years, toward reducing the relative importance of this element in the population of the country, will go on, at least through a considerable future, before it can be arrested; the strongest improbability that this movement will ever, in our future course as a nation, be reversed.

But is there anything to be said on this point beyond what appears on the first glance at our table? Here comes in the significance of one of the considerations adverted to in the opening of this article, viz., that the distribution of the colored people over our land, prior to the outbreak of the civil war, had been very different from what it would have been had only their own natural aptitudes and instincts been consulted in that matter. If this be true, we should expect to find that, during the twentyfive or twenty-seven years since the blacks were left free to move within the country upon their own impulses, social, economical, and climatic forces have been operating to redress the disturbed balance. On this point the evidence of the tenth census could not be very conclusive, especially in view of the disputed count of 1870; but the testimony of the eleventh census, so far as it has yet been given, very clearly shows that a movement is in progress toward the abandonment by the blacks of the higher, colder, and drier lands to which they were carried by the will of the master class.

Unfortunately we have, as yet, only Kansas among the former free States, in the race tables thus far issued by the census office; and the experience of a single State in this respect cannot be held