All travellers agree, that when the Arab, degraded as he is, has an opportunity, there is no shrewder or more skilful bargain-maker, nor any one more competent to extract by ingenious chaffering, the full equivalent for his services. He has been designated by fleeced and angry travellers—little thinking how near the mark they were—the Jew of the desert. The modern Jew, driven from the land of his birth into a wider sphere, exercises his commercial propensities in similar pursuits, and under every clime; and amidst every race, out-manœuvres and surpasses his less shrewd antagonist.
Other Asiatic nations might seem to call for observation; but so little is known of their mental characteristics, that it would be improper to endeavour to substantiate our cause by them.
It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader of the low development of the Negro mind and his miserable nasal conformation—they are worthy of each other. However humane may be the attempts to elevate the Negro, it can never be done till his Nose is more elongated; but as its present form has subsisted without alteration for three or four thousand years, there does not seem much hope of its being improved now. The Negro race, as old as the earliest Egyptian sculptures, has never risen to an equality with any of the other races; and, though we would not willingly condemn any nation to hopeless degradation, yet the history of the Past will reveal somewhat of the secrets of the Future, and he is a fool who cannot, and a coward who dare not, read them.
As among individuals, so among nations there are orders and degrees of mind, and it is only the blind who cannot see that the equality of the one is as wild a dream as the equality of the other.
No well-informed writer, however warm his sympathies towards the Negro race as his relation by the same “blood of which God made all the dwellers upon earth,” has anticipated a destiny for it equal to that of the Caucasian or elliptical-headed and aquiline-nosed races. Channing, the most enthusiastic friend of the blacks, in all the fervour of his ardent mind and vivid imagination, attributes to them a capacity only for the milder graces of Christianity, and accords to them a destiny precisely such as is indicated by their nasal formation when elevated and sanctified by religion. “I should expect,” he says, “from the African race, if civilized, less energy, less courage, less intellectual originality, than in ours; but more amiableness, tranquillity, gentleness, and content. They might not rise to an equality in outward condition, but would probably be a much happier race.” Essentially a feminine character is that which he assigns the negro; a character very loveable, notwithstanding the deformity of its facial indicator.
In the new Islands of the Pacific, we behold a constant succession of new worlds emerging from the deep by means of the same process which, in the pre-Adamite world, formed and elevated the islands and continents of the northern hemisphere. Minute polypi are secreting from the waters, and fixing on the summits of submarine volcanoes the solid and durable limestone which now forms their protection from the waves, and which will hereafter form the foundations on which accumulated detritus will heap up fertile soils and habitable lands.[[53]] Earthquakes are continually pushing up these horizontal surfaces, and breaking them up into mountains which, arresting the clouds in their progress, draw down into the valleys and plains the fertilizing rain. This smooths down the asperities of the earthquake-broken surface, and softens and harmonizes into that sweet variety which gives birth to
“The pleasure situate in hill and dale.”
To people these new lands, Nature has branched off from the old stock, new races of men of various degrees of physical development and mental endowments. While those nearest the old continent of Asia, and therefore nearest to the old blood, are of the lowest possible mental and physical organization, little elevated above the low-class animals—the kangaroo and the ornithorynchus[[54]]—of the Australian plains, those at a greater distance—the New Zealander and the Otaheitan—exhibit a development which may vie with that of the Caucasian nations: and which has proved its equality by not sinking before them, but maintaining against Saxon invaders equal rights and equal privileges.
We have a striking instance of this before us at the present time. The British Legislature having, in ignorance of the determined character and clever good sense of the New Zealanders, endeavoured to force upon them a Constitution which deprived them of legislative privileges equal with those of the colonists, and which gave to the latter the power of taxing the former without their consent, the natives have resisted the injustice so firmly, but hitherto peaceably, that the Governor, Sir George Grey, has been compelled to suspend this so-called Constitution, lest it should foment a war of the most deadly character. It is worthy of observation that the injustice attempted to be done this shrewd and spirited people, is not one of an evident physical character, such as any savage can appreciate, but one of a purely theoretical and political nature, the importance of which is even yet hardly sufficiently understood and appreciated in any country besides England. Sir George Grey writes to the Home Government as follows:
“By the introduction of the proposed Constitution into the provinces of New Zealand, her Majesty’s Ministers would not confer, as it was intended, upon her subjects the blessings of self-government, but would be giving power to a small minority (the colonists). She would not be giving to her subjects the right to manage their affairs as they might think proper, but would be giving to a small minority a power to raise taxes from the great majority (the aborigines). There was no reason to think that the majority of the aboriginal inhabitants would be satisfied with the rule of the minority; while there are many reasons for believing that they would resist to the uttermost. They were people of strong natural sense and ability, but by nature jealous and suspicious. Many of them were owners of vessels, horses, and cattle, and had considerable sums of money at their disposal, and there was no people he was acquainted with less likely to sit down quietly under what they might regard as an injustice.”