the progressive ideas of our days were in conflict with slavery, the prohibition was sweeping. It had one peculiar effect, which we also notice with some Asiatic nations which follow a similar course. The southern people honestly maintained and believed, not only that as a people they were highly civilized, but that their civilization was the highest that could be attained, and ought to serve as a model to other nations the world over. The more enlightened individuals among them felt sometimes a vague impression of the barrenness of their mental life, and the barbarous peculiarities of their social organization; but very few ever dared to investigate and to expose the true cause of these evils. Thus the people were so wrapt up in self-admiration as to be inaccessible to the voice even of the best-intentioned criticism. Hence the delusion they indulged in as to the absolute superiority of their race—a delusion which, in spite of the severe test it has lately undergone, is not yet given up; and will, as every traveller in the south can testify from experience, sometimes express itself in singular manifestations. This spirit, which for so long a time has kept the southern people back while the world besides was moving, is even at this moment still standing as a serious obstacle in the way of progress.
Nothing can, therefore, be more desirable than that the contact between the southern people and the outside world should be as strong and intimate as possible; and in no better way can this end be subserved than by immigration in mass. Of the economical benefits which such immigration would confer upon the owners of the soil it is hardly necessary to speak.
Immigration wants encouragement. As far as this encouragement consists in the promise of material advantage, it is already given. There are large districts in the south in which an industrious and enterprising man, with some capital, and acting upon correct principles, cannot fail to accumulate large gains in a comparatively short time, as long as the prices of the staples do not fall below what they may reasonably be expected to be for some time to come. A northern man has, besides, the advantage of being served by the laboring population of that region with greater willingness.
But among the principal requisites for the success of the immigrant are personal security and a settled condition of things. Personal security is honestly promised by the thinking men of the south; but another question is, whether the promise and good intentions of the thinking men will be sufficient to restrain and control the populace, whose animosity against “Yankee interlopers” is only second to their hostile feeling against the negro. If the military forces of the government should be soon and completely withdrawn, I see reasons to fear that in many localities immigrants would enjoy the necessary security only when settling down together in numbers strong enough to provide for their own protection. On the whole, no better encouragement can be given to immigration, as far as individual security is concerned, than the assurance that the national government will be near to protect them until such protection is no longer needed.
The south needs capital. But capital is notoriously timid and averse to risk itself, not only where there actually is trouble, but where there is serious and continual danger of trouble. Capitalists will be apt to consider—and they are by no means wrong in doing so—that no safe investments can be made in the south as long as southern society is liable to be convulsed by anarchical disorders. No greater encouragement can, therefore, be given to capital to transfer itself to the south than the assurance that the government will continue to control the development of the new social system in the late rebel States until such dangers are averted by a final settlement of things upon a thorough free-labor basis.
How long the national government should continue that control depends upon contingencies. It ought to cease as soon as its objects are attained; and its objects will be attained sooner and with less difficulty if nobody is permitted to indulge in the delusion that it will cease before they are attained. This is one of the cases in which a determined policy can accomplish much, while a half-
