BARBARISM OF THE AFRICAN RACE.
The African race is a race of barbarians, and civilization to that race would be an artificial state of existence.[3] The vestiges of barbarism characterize the African, in his normal state. The latent principle of cannibalism, lurks, in dormant energy, within the very core of his being, and constitutes a prominent characteristic of his animal existence. The economy and order of nature is no less marked in the carnivorous than in the herbivorous mammalia and quadrumana; and although their physical distinctions are not always so marked as to render apparent, to superficial observation, the uses and functions of their entire organism, yet science has been a tolerably faithful interpreter of cause and effect, and has not failed to recognize those organic qualities, and the structural adaptability of the African race, which qualify it for its mission as the representative of barbaric fury and degradation, and the type, in human form, of that chaotic element of self-annihilation, which nature has kindly restricted to the fewest number of the lowest orders of animated being.[4] The inhabitants of Southern and Central Africa, from whence our slaves are drawn, the Feejeean, the Caffrarian, the New-Zealander, and the Hottentot, are stamped by nature with the unmistakable character of unmitigated barbarism, and absolute antagonism to civilization; and their improvement when brought in contact with civilization is so slow as almost to escape detection. Indeed it is doubtful whether the arts of European and American civilization have succeeded in so fascinating the African race among us as to warrant the expectation of permanency to the colony of Liberia, except from the light reflected by constant and continued emigration; and it is believed, by many shrewd philanthropists whose efforts have been long devoted to the cause of African colonization, that should emigration to the colony cease, the Negroes there would immediately relapse into their former habits and customs, and ultimately resume their original character of cannibals.