These peculiarities not only mark specific lines, but greatly widen the divisions by the properties which are found pertaining to them.
It is by these properties—the variability on the one hand, and non-variability on the other—that men of science have classified animated things into improvable and non-improvable species. Those unchangeable in reproduction, as the lion, the tiger, the leopard and the bear, who partake in exact proportions of the stripes, and spots, and colors of their progenitors, are assigned to the division of non-improvables, while the horse, the dog and the ox, who vary their colors in reproduction, are assigned to the division of improvable things.
The non-improvable are also non-progressive, consequently, as the negro falls within that division, he must be assigned to the non-progressive department of animated beings.
But how far the rule is general, we do not pretend to know, but apprehend that, like most other rules, it is subject to exceptions. Still, there can be no difficulty in perceiving that the little dark eyes, bullet head and inexpressive countenance of the negro are not the accompaniments of high mental unfoldings, nor is it likely that civilization, though forced into the mind, could long be retained when all these characteristics of inferiority are regularly transmitted in reproduction. By the constant power of tuition he may be forced to a particular limit, but, like the soft magnet, he lapses into his native condition whenever the charging power is withdrawn.
In his native country his mentality, like a heavy fluid, has scarcely, if ever, presented a ripple. Does not this point to a non-progressive nature? The same sun which has risen and set upon the white man, has also, with the same brilliancy shone upon him, and for precisely the same number of revolving years. Why, then, has he remained so far below the white man, if he be not of an inferior species?
By the flow may we determine the character of the fountain; and, as governments and laws are the outshoots of the minds which make them, by such productions may normal status be determined. “Show me your laws,” said a philosopher, “and I will tell you what you are.” Show me that you have no laws, and the rule will apply with equal force and precision, for then you prove yourself a barbarian. By this rule then, as well as by any other, let the negro be measured.
All Africa, under the dominion of the negro mind—from the desert to the cape—with her fifty to a hundred millions of people, is a country of masters and slaves, nailed down by nature to the lowest possible level of barbarian life. Men, women and children mingle together in unbroken nudity, bask in their sands, feed on bugs and reptiles, and even on the flesh of one another. The men strut as warriors, though slaves to petty princes, and the women bend to their lots as bearers of burdens. Are these nature’s arguments in favor of negro with white equality before the law!
With all these facts before us, it is scarcely possible for us to conceive of any two species of the same genus being more opposite to each other than the white man and the negro. But men, educated to a religious belief of a common origin, will cling to it, and on it form theories of restorable natures, in spite of the most commanding evidences which, in every way, thicken around them. Cain’s wife may or may not have been of the seed of Adam. But whether she was or was not, or of a different species, is a subject of but little consequence to us in the present time, for we have to deal with things, not as they were, nor as they may have been, but as we actually now find them in being.
No common type of this great genus, man, has ever been produced by either change of climate or country, nor by cross in reproduction. But, on the contrary, amalgamation is found to be the down-hill to the grave of all the species. The American Indian has disappeared by the operation of many causes, but none other have been so fatal as the intermingling of his blood with the Caucasian’s. The mulatto, or mule man, of the black and white cross, also travels downward, and soon disappears, if not reinforced with pure blood from one or the other species. “He will not,” says a learned American writer, “reproduce after the third remove from the original unity.” Consequently, if the rule be unexceptionable, a mulatto, in the fourth remove, unaided by an intervening black or white parent, does not exist upon the whole face of the world. Why should not such propositions be investigated, and facts determined, before a country is torn to atoms by a madness built on the assumption of universal equality, without regard to race or species? But men seeking power through deception—the churchman seeking dominion over other sects—the tory, the ascendency of the British crown—the half-starved politician, the spoils of office—the vain, a strap or two of tinsel, and the covetous trader, the plunder of a camp—may find negro equality as convenient as any other device.
But you proclaim an age of progress, and dignify folly with the name of an experiment—an ideal pomp around which has ever clustered the frivolous and the vain. But do you not know that experiments are far more common with the ignorant than with the learned? They experiment because they know not of the experiments which have gone before them.