On National Character. “35k 
copy it. A little below the Russians are the 
Africans, a people so ill treated by their bre- 
thren of mankind, that they have been kept 
back from civilization. Their population has 
been lessened by European baseness, and thus 
their progress has been stopped; but still they 
are advanced to the imitative stage ; and it 
is because they imitate well that they are 
bought as slaves, and that they are made. 
domestics. The aborigines of America were 
not in general advanced far enough in civili- 
zation to be made useful to their conquerors ; 
they could not be made to work, in other 
words to imitate, and therefore negroes were 
bought with money to supply their place. A 
slave has no inducement to exercise the talent 
he possesses: but that the negroes possess the 
imitative talent will not be denied ; when 
introduced into our families they speedily 
catch our manners; in our West India Islands 
they are good artisans; but at St. Domingo 
their real state of civilization is best appre- 
ciated. With respect to the Mexicans and 
Peruvians, history furnishes ample testimony 
of their being advanced to the first siaye of 
civilized nations. Arrived at that full and 
overflowing state of population, which re- 
quires a new system in obtaining the means 
of subsistence. Mungo Capac, a man in 
