“Some of the intelligent free negroes of the United States, with whom I often conversed, for the express purpose of personal observation, felt the ban under which they were put, by the influence of prejudice, as they considered it, after the laws of the country had declared them free, and equal to any other citizen of the State; and, in the confidence inspired by my inquiries about their situation, I was often asked if, in England, white women did not marry black men? And, with apparent simplicity, it was inquired why the American white women were so prejudiced against black men?...
“Those who merely refer the degraded state of the free Africans or blacks to their having been formerly slaves, and leave out of their consideration the consequences arising from physical differences in form, colour, feature, and smell, influencing those general ideas of beauty, creating that passion of love that most commonly leads to a virtuous union of the sexes of different nations, must be considered as having taken a very narrow view of the question, from the prevalent custom of merely referring to moral causes alone, and omitting all references to those of a physical nature, though still more powerful in their effect.” (1)
This extraordinary argument is concluded by a touching representation of the refinement which modesty gives to pleasure, and of the happiness of being cherished and beloved, which, we hope, will edify the young gentlemen of the
(1) Second Part of Major Moody’s Report, pages 19 and 20.
Colonial Office, but which has, we think, little to do with the question. This, therefore, we omit, as well as the pious appeal to the God of Truth, which follows it.
Is it possible that the Major does not perceive how directly all his statement leads towards a conclusion, diametrically opposite to that at which, by some inconceivable process, he has managed to arrive? We will give him an answer. But we really hope that he is the only one of our readers who will need it.
The passion of the sexes is a natural appetite. Marriage is a civil and religious institution. Where, therefore, between two classes of people, the passion exists, but marriage is not practised, it is evident that nature impels them to unite, and that acquired feelings only keep them asunder.
Now, Major Moody just reverses this mode of reasoning. Because the Whites form with the Blacks those illicit unions, to which the motive is physical, but do not form those legitimate unions to which the motive is moral, he actually infers that the cause which separates the races is not moral, but physical! In the same manner, we presume, he would maintain, that a man who dines heartily without saying grace, is deficient, not in devotion, but in appetite.
The story which he tells respecting the free blacks, with whom he conversed in the United States, is alone sufficient to show the absurdity of his hypothesis. From his own account, it is plain that these blacks had no antipathy to white women. The repugnance was all on one side. And on which side? On that of the privileged class, of those whose superiority was till lately recognised by law, and is still established by custom. Is this a phenomenon so extraordinary that we must have recourse to a new instinct to account for it? Or may it not be explained into the same causes which in England prevent a lady from marrying a tinker, though the tinker would gladly marry the lady?
In the last century, the dissipated nobles of France lavished their wealth with the wildest profusion on actresses and opera girls. The favour of a distinguished heroine of this class, was thought to be cheaply purchased at the price of jewels, gilded coaches, palaces blazing with mirrors, or even of some drops of aristocratic blood. Yet the poorest gentleman in the kingdom would not have married Clairon. This, Major Moody would say, proves that men who wear swords, feather, and red-heeled shoes, entertain a natural aversion to women who recite verses out of Andromaque and Tartuffe. We think that we could hit on a different explanation.