The investigations about idiotic and defective children are by no means satisfactory, and are considered by some of the most careful writers as not at all proving a greater tendency to such misfortunes in the offspring of cousins. Among a thousand idiotic children recently examined in Paris, not one was descended from a healthy consanguinity.
But as few families are wholly without some lurking predisposition to disease, it is not well, as a rule, to run the risk of developing this by too repeated unions. Stock-breeders find that the best specimens of the lower animals are produced by crossing nearly-related individuals a certain number of times; but that, carried beyond this, such unions lead to degeneracy and sterility. Such, also, has been the experience of many human families.
How slight a cause even of that most insidious disease, consumption, such marriages are, may be judged from the fact, that of a thousand cases inquired into by Dr. Edward Smith, in only six was there consanguinity of parents.
THE MIXTURE OF RACES.
Mankind, say the school geographies, is divided into five races, each distinguished by its own color. They are the white, the black, the red, the yellow, and the brown races. In this country, practically, we have to do with but the white and black races; and the question is constantly asked, Shall we approve of marriages between them? Shall a white woman choose a black man to be her husband?
We are at the more pains to answer this, because recently a writer—and this writer a woman, and this woman one of the most widely known in our land—has written a novel intended to advocate the affirmative of this question. Moreover, it is constantly mooted in certain political circles, and is one of the social problems of the day.
The very fact that it is so much discussed, shows that such a union runs counter to a strong prejudice. Such aversions are often voices of nature, acting as warnings against acts injurious to the species. In this instance it is not of modern origin, created by peculiar institutions. Three centuries ago, Shakspeare, who had probably never seen a score of negroes in his life, with the divination of genius, felt the repugnance which a refined woman would feel to accepting one as her husband. The plot of one of his plays turns on it. He makes Iago say of Desdemona:
'Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree;
Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends:
Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank,
Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural.'
It is, indeed, 'nature erring from itself' which prompts to these marriages. They are not sterile, but the children are sickly and short-lived. Very few mulattoes reach an old age.
Then it is well known that the black race cannot survive a northern climate. Dr. Snow, of Providence, Rhode Island, who has given great attention to the study of statistics, says emphatically that, in New England, the colored population inevitably perish in a few generations, if left to themselves. This debility no woman should wish to give to her children.