It is not, however, upon sentimental grounds that we oppose this extension of the exaggerated dogma of equality.  Our objection is deeper.  Race distinctions ought to be maintained for the sake of the best development of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual reaction and play of peculiar forces between races which promise the highest development for the whole.  It is not for nothing, we may suppose, that differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that either benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore an assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresome homogeneity.

Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied the relations interchanged the higher the life.  We want not only different races, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.

A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the proper destiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by a recent colored writer,—­["Africa and the Africans.”  By Edmund W. Blyden.  Eraser’s Magazine, August, 1878.]—­an official in the government of Liberia.  We are mistaken, says this excellent observer, in regarding Africa as a land of a homogeneous population, and in confounding the tribes in a promiscuous manner.  There are negroes and negroes.  “The numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more be regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia or Europe can be so regarded;” and we are not to expect the civilization of Africa to be under one government, but in a great variety of States, developed according to tribal and race affinities.  A still greater mistake is this: 

“The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of negro improvement and the future of Africa is in supposing that the negro is the European in embryo, in the undeveloped stage, and that when, by-and-by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, he will become like the European; in other words, that the negro is on the same line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, but infinitely in the rear . . . .  This view proceeds upon the assumption that the two races are called to the same work, and are alike in potentiality and ultimate development, the negro only needing the element of time, under certain circumstances, to become European.  But to our mind it is not a question between the two races of inferiority or superiority.  There is no absolute or essential superiority on the one side, or absolute or essential inferiority on the other side.  It is a question of difference of endowment and difference of destiny.  No amount of training or culture will make the negro a European.  On the other hand, no lack of training or deficiency of culture will make the European a negro.  The two races are not moving in the same groove, with an immeasurable distance between them, but on parallel lines.  They will never meet in the plane of their activities so as to coincide in capacity or performance.  They are not identical, as some think, but unequal; they are distinct, but equal—­an idea that is in no way incompatible with the Scripture truth that God hath made of one blood all nations of men.”