ample corroborations illustrative of the inconvenience which true
ethnological science might have created in philanthropical diplomacy,
had it been frankly introduced by a Calhoun.
No class of men, perhaps, understand better the practical importance
of Ethnology than the statesmen of England ; yet from motives
of policy, they keep its agitation studiously out of sight. Dr. P richard,
when speaking of a belief in the diversity of races, justly remarks—
“ If these opinions are not every day expressed in this country [England], it is because
the avowal of them is restrained by a degree of odium that would be excited by it.” 3
Although the press in that country has been, to a great extent,
muzzled by governmefit influence, we are happy to See that her periodicals
are beginning to assume a bolder and more rational tone ; and
we may now hope that the stereotyped errors òf Prichard, and we
might add, those of Latham,4 will soon pass at their true value. The
immense evils of false philanthropy are becoming too glaring to be
longer overlooked. "While, on the one hand, every true philanthropist
must admit that no race has a right to enslave or oppress the weaker,
it must be conceded, on the other, that all changes in existing institutions
should be guided, not by fanaticism and groundless hypotheses,
but by experience, sound judgment, and real charity.
“ No one that has not worked much in the element of History can be aware of the
immense importance of clearly keeping in view the differences of race that are discernible
among the nations that inhabit different parts of the world. In practical politics it is certainly
possible to push such ethnographical considerations too far ; as, for example, in our
own cant about Celt and Saxon, when Ireland is under discussion; but in speculative
history, in questions relating to thè past career and the future destinies of nations, it is
only by a firm and effioient handling of this conception of our species as broken up into f/o
many groups or masses, physiologically different to a certain extent, that any progress can
be made, or any available conclusions accurately arrived at.
“ The Negeo, or African, with his black skin, woolly hair, and compressed elongated
skull ; the Mongolian of Eastern Asia and America, with his olive complexion, .broad and
all but beardless face, oblique eyes, and square skull ; and the Caucasian of Western Asia
and Europe, with his fair skin, oval face, full brow, and rounded skull : such, as every
school-boy knows, are the three gréât types or varieties into which naturalists have divided
the inhabitants of our planet. Accepting this rough initial conception of a world peopled
everywhere, more or less completely, with these three varieties of human beings or their
combinations, the historian is able, in virtue of it, to announce one important fact at the
very outset, to wit : that, up to the present moment, the destinies of the species appear to
have been carried forward almost exclusively by its Caucasian variety.” 3
In the broad field and long duration of Negro life, not a single
civilization, spontaneous or borrowed, has existed, to adorn its gloomy
past. Tbe ancient kingdom of Meroë bas been often pointed out as
an exception, but this is now proven to be tbe work of Pbaraonic *
Egyptians, and not of Negro races. Of Mongoban races, we bave tbe
prolonged semi-civilizations of Cbina, Japan, and (if tbey be classed
un er tbe same bead) tbe still feebler attempts of Peru and Mexico.
"Wbat a contrast, if we compare with these,
“ Caucasian progress, as exhibited in the splendid succession of distinct civilizations,
from the ancient Egyptian to the recent Anglo-American, to which the Caucasian part of
the species has given birth.”
Nor when we examine their past bistory, tbeir anatomical and physiological
characters, and philological differences, are we justified in
throwing all tbe Indo-European and Semitic races into one indivisible
mass.
“ Our species is not a huge collection of perfectly similar human beings, but an aggregation
of a number of separate groups or masses, having such subordinate differences of
organization that, necessarily, they must understand nature differently, and employ in life
very different modes of procedure. Assemble together a Negro, a Mongol, a Shemite, an
Armenian, a Scythian, a Pelasgian, a Celt, and a Oerman, and you will 'have before, you
not mere illustrations of an arbitrary classification, but positively distinct human beings —
men whose relations to the outer world are by no means the same.”
“ In all, indeed, there wiU.be found the same fundamental instincts and powers, the
same obligation to recognized truth, the same feeling for the beautiful, the same abstract
sense of justice, the same necessity of reverence; in all, the same liability to do wrong,
knowing it to be wrong. These things excepted, however, what contrast, what variety!
The representative of one race is haughty and eager to strike, that of another is meek and
patient of injury; one has the gift of slow and continued perseverance, another can labour
only at intervals and violently; one is full of mirth and humour, another walks as if life
were a pain; one is so faithful and clear in perception, that what he sees to-day he will
report accurately a year hence; through the head of another there perpetually sings such
a buzz of fiction that, even as he looks, realities grow dim, and rocks, trees, and hills, reel
before his poetic gaze. Whether, with phrenologists, we call these differences craniological;
or whether, in the spirit of a deeper physiology, we adjourn the question by refusing to
connect them with aught less than the whole corporeal organism—bone, chest, limbs, skin,
muscle, and nerve; they are, at all events, real and substantial; and Englishmen will
never conceive, the world as it is, will never be intellectually its masters, until, realizing
this as a fact, they shall remember that it is perfectly respectable to be an Assyrian, and
that an Italian is not necessarily a rogue because he wears a moustache.” 6
Looking back over the world’s history, it will be seen that human
progress has arisen mainly from the war of races. All the great
impulses which have been given to it from time to time have been
the results of conquests and colonizations. Certain races would be
stationary and barbarous for ever, were it not for the introduction of
new blood and novel influences; and some of the^owest types are
hopelessly beyond the reach even of these salutary stimulants to
melioration.
It has been naively remarked that —
“ Climate has no influence in permanently altering the varieties or races of men; destroy
them it may, and does, but it cannot convert them into any other race; nor can this be
done by an act of parliament; which, to a thoroughgoing Englishman, with all his amusing
nationalities, will appear as something amazing. It has been tried in Wales, Ireland, and
Caledonia, and failed.” i
Not enough is it for us to know who and what are the men who