MOBAL SENSE IN MAN. 169 



tice often of the most open or public kind, not only in savage 

 peoples, but in the midst of our own boasted civilisation. 

 There is probably not a town or village in not a part of our 

 own country in which so revolting a practice does not con- 

 stitute a prevalent public nuisance. Evidences of its ex- 

 istence as such obtrude themselves on my own notice literally 

 daily. 



Want of honesty a propensity to steal, utter disregard for 

 any rights of property is a common feature in the character 

 of savage man ; and disregard for truth untruthfulness is 

 almost an invariable accompaniment. The natives of Daho- 

 mey ' are not ashamed to be detected in lying and in the 

 performance of base and dishonest actions' (Ellis). Of the 

 negro of Angola Monteiro says, c His constant want of truth 

 and his invariable dishonesty are the result .... of the 

 impossibility to understand that there is anything wrong in 

 being either a liar or a thief.' Of certain African negro 

 slaves in the North American States a German traveller 

 writes, ' Almost all are thieves and liars. Hence the evidence 

 of a black has no validity in a court of justice' (Buchner). 

 The Sultan Abclallah, King of Johanna, in a letter to Dr. 

 Kirk, H.B.M. Consul at Zanzibar, printed in one of our 

 Government Blue Books, remarks, apropos of the want of 

 veracity that characterises his subjects the Johanna men, 

 of whom we have heard so much in connexion with the 

 various Livingstone relief expeditions, ' A nigar .... was 

 never born to tell the truth. . . . Our law never allows a 

 nigar to swear as witness.' And there are hosts of travel- 

 lers, and of residents, in countries in which the ' nigger ' 

 is a native, who constantly bear similarly strong testimony 

 to his untruthfulness. Certain African tribes are * lying and 

 deceitful to a superlative degree ' (Baker.) 



Indifference to human suffering, deliberate cruelty to the 

 weak or helpless, enjoyment of the results of torture of vic- 

 tims, mercilessness or relentlessness, are also common attri- 

 butes of the savage character. And in this respect, as in so 

 many others, the human savage compares most unfavourably 

 with the Camivora or other animals. The Carnivora prey 

 on living victims; but not only savage frequently also semi- 



