(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 27.
whites and blacks have felt this mutual dislike. Till he can show this, he does nothing.
But, it seems, an anonymous writer in South America, some years ago, declared, that the blacks never could amalgamate with the whites. (1) That a man who had passed his life among negro slaves should transfer to their colour the feelings of contempt with which he regarded their condition, and the mean vices to which that condition necessarily gave birth, was perfectly natural. That he should suppose a feeling, of which he could not remember the origin, to be instinctive, was also natural. The most profound thinkers have fallen into similar errors. But that a man in England should believe all this, only because a man at Bogota chose to write it, argues a strange degree of credulity. Such vague authority is not sufficient to establish a fact. To quote it in support of a general proposition, is an insult to common sense. The expressions of this Columbian prove only, what the refusal of the Major to let a negro sit in his presence proves as satisfactorily, that there are very weak and very prejudiced people in the world.
Feelings exactly similar to those which are unhappily so common among the whites of the United States, have often existed in cases where it is impossible to attribute them to physical causes. From a time beyond the researches of historians, an impassable gulf has separated the Brahmin from the Paria. The Jews were long regarded by the Spaniards and Portuguese with as much contempt and hatred as the white North American feels for the man of colour. The cases, indeed, are strikingly similar. The national features and rites of the Hebrews, like the black skin and woolly hair of the Africans, visibly distinguished them from the rest of the community. Every individual of the race bore about him the badges of the synagogue. Baptism itself could not wash away the distinction. Conversion might save him from the flames; but the stigma was indelible—he bore it to the grave—he bequeathed it to his children—his descendants, as long as their genealogy could be traced, were objects of scorn to the poorest Castilian peasant, who gloried in the name of an old Christian.
But we will not multiply examples in a case so plain. We hasten to another argument, on which Major Moody
(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, p. 23. 24
dwells with peculiar complacency. At this, indeed, we do not much wonder. It is entirely his own. He is the first writer who ever used it, and we venture to prophesy that he will be the last. We speak of his remarks on the influence of the sexual passion. We will give his own words:—
“In such committees as I have referred to, an observer will not fail to discover the want of a certain class of sympathies, which are daily seen in action when men of the same race live together, even in republics, like the United States of America, although a portion of the community consisted of men of different nations and habits, but yet resembling each other in external form, colour, features, &c.
“I allude to the extraordinary rarity of virtuous unions having taken place between the males and females of the pure Negroes and the pure Whites in America. I certainly have heard of such unions as in certain classes of society are seen in London; but in America, they were considered rather as very extraordinary occurrences, particularly if the male should be a pure negro, and the female a pure white. On the other hand, when the female is an African, lust, aided by fear or avarice, has often led to an illicit union between the sexes....
“In the New World of America, virtuous unions between the extreme colours of black and white are always considered something in violation of the ordinary sympathies which spring from a pure affection, and therefore derogatory to the feelings of caste; for even the free coloured females, I understand, would have a reluctance, if advanced in civilization, to form a virtuous union with a pure negro....