14 Biographical Memoir of Baron de Beauvois. 



observed respecting tlie physical and moral constitution of the 

 Negroes, he could never persuade himself that their race belong- 

 ed to the same species as ours, or that they were capable of arriv- 

 ing at the same degree of civilization. It was not that he merely 

 saw in them another skin, other hair, another form of the head and 

 teeth, and another general constitution. In the most fertile soil, 

 where the inhabitants were naturally of a mild disposition, with 

 an inclination to hospitality, and a fondness for domestic plea- 

 sures, in a word, amid all the means of arriving at the most 

 perfect state of social happiness, he had found them, without ex- 

 ception, given up to the most absurd and cruel superstitions, 

 and sunk in the most beastly sensuality. At no period does his- 

 tory shew them to have been otherwise. Religion, that parent of 

 civilization, had remained ineffectual in reclaiming them. He 

 had seen, in the town of Oware, the cross, which the Portuguese 

 missionaries had planted there, still worshipped, but as a fetiche. 

 The altar and the consecrated vessels that had been left, were 

 rendered subservient to the operations of magic ; and, as he him- 

 self says, the temple of the true God devoted to the worship of 

 the devil. The Mahometans, who had less repugnance to over- 

 come in converting the Negroes, had not been more successful 

 than the Christians ; and all tho influence that their priests 

 acquired was to sell, at a high price, passages of the Koran 

 written on bits of paper which they use as amulets. M. de 

 Beauvois was therefore persuaded, that this humiliating and 

 degraded state depends upon the very nature of the race ; that 

 this character is indelible ; and that traces of it must be retained 

 wherever there remains a drop of Negro blood. 



He did not sufficiently remember that all men, and the whites 

 as well as others, may be strongly influenced by the prejudices 

 which they have imbibed in childhood. The Egyptians^ whom 

 no one will accuse of having wanted intellectual qualities, re- 

 tained the worship of animals to the time of Constantine. The 

 prince most celebrated by poets, at the most brilliant epoch 

 of letters, the Emperor Augustus, sacrificed men to the manes 

 of his adopted father, and twice refused festivals to Neptune, in 

 order, as he said, to punish him for having twice destroyed his 

 fleets. Who, after this, will venture to blanie the king of the 

 Ashantees or of Benin, and think tliat their ignorance ot their 

 cruelty depends upon their organisation ? In fine, were it even 



