The moral and mental growth of those Africans who were formerly slaves in the British West Indies, shows the possibility of negro culture under the influence of freedom. The official reports of the various governors of these islands, show that, since emancipation, there has been a rapid and steady growth of their prosperity; and the absolute veracity which characterizes these reports of English agents to their government cannot for a moment be doubted. In some of the islands, such as Nassau and others, the products and revenues have increased a hundred-fold, while the cost of administration (for keeping protective fleets and repressive soldiery, needed now no more) has greatly diminished. They also certify to a great increase in the imports from England—their mother country in the noblest sense of the word. Even the export of sugar is nearly equal to what it was under the forced labor of slavery, while its intrinsic production has vastly increased—the domestic consumption far surpassing what it was in the palmiest days of the planters. These are facts which only hypocrisy can pervert, or perversion conceal.
With reference also to the question of the "viability" and longevity of hybrids, mulattoes, etc., science protests against the fallacy which the new pro-slavery apostles advocate. Facts confirm the deductions of genuine science, and explode the fallacies of its counterfeit. The Dominican Republic is almost entirely composed of a mulatto population, which is now in its second or third generation, if not older. Neither are these mulattoes dying out, but they are increasing by and within themselves. No human white stallions are imported there from slave-breeding regions to correct or keep up the breed.
If, however, there should still linger a presumption of the superiority of the white over the black man, it must speedily vanish when the arguments of the militant upholders of slavery—whether they be in senatorial togas, in priestly robes, or in printer's ink—are subjected to the analysis of impartial philosophy or common logic. A spurious and depraved civilization is far more dangerous and degrading to society, and more truly evidences positive mental inferiority, than does the absence of civilization or the primitive savage condition. And this is the more true when the subjects of such a spurious civilization have within reach the elements of a genuine moral and social culture, but at the same time spurn and depreciate them all. Such persons, whatever may be their conventional position or ethnic descent, whatever the color of their skin, the form of their skull, or the nature of their hair, are singly and collectively inferior to the uncultivated and oppressed and hence degraded negro; while in respect of justice, manhood, and all that is ennobling, they make no approach to the millions of industrious and intelligent farmers and free yeomanry, artisans, and mechanics of the free states, still less with the higher manifestations of these qualities in great and generous minds.
Neither in the Mosaic record, therefore, nor the native sense of morality, still less in science, can any support be found for the fallacies propounded by the apostles of American slavery. Science, just and elevated in its intrinsic nature, deduces conclusions and establishes laws with sublime impartiality, extenuating naught, and setting down naught in malice. The normal character of every science, always and forever, is emancipatory. Science emancipates the mind from prejudices, falsehoods, and superstitions, and from the tyranny exercised over man by the elements and forces of nature, as well as from the far more malignant forces of social oppression. It is doubtless this divine character of true science which makes it so repulsive to the apostles of human degradation.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The old colonial customs and legal regulations in America, fully confirm the above statements. White servants, with or without indenture, were kept in bondage by their masters, as were other chattels, and sometimes, though rarely, these servants were even sold. Without, therefore, going back to any European origin, it may be peremptorily asserted that it is comparatively a short time since the sires of many haughty militant slavery defenders were bondsmen on American soil.
[8] Flavius Josephus says, that under the Herods, Judea contained double the population established by the census of David. Perhaps this account is exaggerated; but, at any rate, it shows a great and positive increase.