NEHAVEND  , a small but very fertile and productive

province of Persia, situated south-west of Hamadan, west of Malayir, and north-west of Burujird . Pop. about 15,00e . The capital is the ancient city of Nehavend, where Yazdegird, the last monarch of the Sassanian dynasty, was finally defeated by the Arabs . (A.D . 641) . It has a population of about 5000, including 700 to 800 Jews; there are fine gardens, and an old citadel on a hill . It is situated at an elevation of 5540 ft., 27 M. from Doletabad (Malayir), and 25 M. from Burujird . deserves careful attention . Enumerations of prisoners affording comparable results were made in 1880, 1890 and 1904 . Negro Number per i Prisoners. ioo,000 Pop . 16,089 24,277 26,087 These figures show a rapid increase between 188o and 1890 in the number and proportion of negro prisoners, and between 1890 and 1904 a slow increase in the number and a notable decrease in the proportion . But in order to make the figures for 1890 and 1904 comparable, it is necessary to exclude from those for the earlier date 4473 negro prisoners mainly belonging to two classes, persons in confinement prior to sentence and persons in prison because of their inability to pay a fine, but all belonging to classes which were excluded from the enumeration for 1904 .

This gives the following result: Date . Negro Number per whites . Prisoners. ioo,000 Pop . 1880 16,089 244 96 1890 19,804 264 ' 84 1904 26,087 278 77 The proportion of negro prisoners to population increased rapidly between 188o and 1890 and slightly between 1890 and 1904, the increase for the first

period being most accurately shown by the first set of figures and that for the second period by the second set of figures . It is noteworthy also that the proportion of white prisoners to population decreased during the same period . Perhaps a more significant comparison is that between the proportion of prisoners of each race to the population of that race in the northern states and the southern states respectively, the distribution of population and the systems of penal legislation and administration being widely different in the two sections . It is impossible to make the correction just referred to except for the United States as a whole, but it must be remembered that the figures for 1890 are not comparable with those for 1904, and that the true figures for that year would be decidedly less . Number of Prisoners to each zoo,000 People . Date . Southern States . Northern States . Negroes .

Whites . Negroes . Whites . 188o 157 58 495 199 1 890 285 62 743 83 1904 221 40 Date . 1880 1890 1904 244 324 278 These figures indicate that in the southern states in 1890 there were about four and a

half times as many negro prisoners to population as white prisoners, and in 1904 about five and a half times as many; that in the northern states in 1890 there were about six times as many negro prisoners to population as white prisoners, and in 1904 about nine times as many . They throw no light whatever upon a point they are often quoted as establishing, the comparative criminality of the northern and southern negroes . Those residing in the north include an abnormal number of males, of adults, and of city population, influences all tending to increase the proportion of prisoners . It seems likely that if the figures for the south in 1890 could be made strictly comparable with those for the same region in 1904 the apparent decrease of 22 % in the proportion of negro prisoners to population would almost but not quite disappear . The evidence regarding crime indicates a continued but slow and slackening increase in the proportion of negro prisoners to negro population in the country as a whole and in its two main sections, an increase in the proportion of white prisoners to white population during the first interval and a decrease during the second, and a growing difference between the two races in the proportion of prisoners . Citizenship.—When the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution were adopted, the former conferring United States citizenship on all native negroes and the latter providing that the right of such citizens to vote should not be abridged by any state on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude, it was not the practice in northern states to allow negroes to vote . Proposals to grant them the suffrage were submitted to the voters in 1865 in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado, and in each state they were rejected . In all states containing a large proportion of negroes the results of the Federal policy of reconstruction were disastrous, and those bitter years probably contributed more than the Civil War itself to estrange the two sections .

Since the withdrawal of Federal troops in 1877 the prevailing and persistent

judgment of southern whites regarding the laws and the policy to be adopted upon this subject has been accorded more and more weight in determining the action of the states and the Federal government .