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and assert that white men are mere deviations from original ];er. 

 Cection. Odd as this opinion may seem, they have Linnteus, 

 the celebrated naturalist, on their side ; who supposes man a 

 native of the tropical climates, and only a sojourner mure to the 

 north. But not to enter into a controversy upon a matter of a 

 very remote speculation, I think one argument alone will sulhce 

 to prove the contrary, and show that the white man is the origi- 

 nal source from whence the other varieties have sprang. We 

 have frequently seen white children produced from black parents, 

 but have never seen a black offspring the production of two 

 whites. From hence we may conclude, that whiteness is the 

 colour to which mankind naturally tends : for, as in the tulip, 

 the parent stock is known by all the artificial varieties breaking 

 into it ; so in man, that colour must be original which never al- 

 ters, and to which all the rest are accidentally seen to change. 

 I have seen in London, at different times, two white negroes 

 the issue of black parents, that served to convince me of the 

 truth of this theory. I had before been taught to believe that 

 the whiteness of the negro's skin was a disease, a kind of milky 

 whiteness, that might be called rather a leprous crust than a 

 natural complexion. I was taught to suppose that the number- 

 less white negroes found in various parts of Africa, the white 

 men that go by the name of Chacrelas, in the East Indies, and 

 the white Americans, near the Isthmus of Darien, in the West 

 Indies, were all as so many diseased persons, and even more 

 deformed than the blackest of the natives. But, upon examin- 

 ing that negro which was last shown in London, I found the 

 colo\ir to be exactly like that of an European -. the visage white 

 and ruddy, and the lips of the proper redness. However, 

 there were sufficient marks to convince me of its descent. The 

 Hair was white and woolly, and very unlike any thing I had seen 

 before. The iris of the eye was yellow, inclining to red ; the 

 nose was fiat, exactly resembling that of a negro ; and the lips 

 thick and prominent. No doubt, therefore, remained of the 

 child's having been born of negro parents . and the person who 

 showed it had attestations to convince the most incredulous. 

 From this, then, we see that the variations of the negro colour 

 is into whiteness, whereas the white are never found to have a 

 race of negro children. Upon the whole, therefore, all those 

 changes which the African, the Asiatic, or the American, uu- 



