FIRST EDITION. 



appears, however, in a subsequent page, that " wherever the 

 Americans have been gradually accustomed to hard labour, 

 their constitutions become robust enough to equal any effort 

 of the natives either of Africa or Europe."* Personal de- 

 bility, therefore, could not have been the peculiar character- 

 istic of the American species; for the human frame, in every 

 part of the globe, acquires strength by gradual employment, 

 and is comparatively feeble without it. 



Again: among the qualities which the Historian considers 

 as universally predominant in the Americans, he ascribes to 

 them, in a remarkable degree, a hardness of heart and a brutal 

 insensibility to the sufferings of their fellow creatures. f " So 

 little (he observes) is the breast of a savage susceptible of 

 those sentiments which prompt men to that feeling attention 

 which mitigates distress, that in some provinces of America the 

 Spaniards have found it necessary to enforce the 'common du- 

 ties of humanity by positive la\vs.' ? j; Neither is this account 

 of their inflexibility confined to the ferocious barbarian of the 

 northern provinces, or to the miserable outcast of Terra del 

 Fuego. The author extends his description to all the unci- 

 vilized inhabitants of the New 'Hemisphere. It constitutes 1 a 

 striking feature in his general estimate ; for he establishes it as 

 a fixed principle, that " in every part of the deportment of 

 man in his savage state, whether towards his equals of the 

 human species, or towards the animals below him, we recog- 

 nize the same character, and trace the operations of a mind in- 

 tent on its own gratifications, and regulated by its own caprice, 

 without much attention or sensibility to the sentiments and 

 feelings of the beings around him." 



Certainly the learned Author, while employed in this repre- 

 sentation, had wholly forgotten the account which he had br- 



* History of America, Vol. I. p. 294.. 

 t P. 405. 

 I P. 406. 

 P. 407. 



