35 
of Mr. Manners were not addressed to the particular question of the Negro, 
and therefore I shall not occupy your time by dwelling upon them, though I 
aoree with him generally as to the degeneration of mankind. As to what 
has fallen from Mr. M‘ Arthur, I quite agree with his conclusions. It is one 
of the weak points of the paper —if I may say it has any weak points— that 
the climatic influence is put too much on one side. I think there are many 
influences which, in all probability, have conduced to the development of the 
Negro races as we now find them, and that the influence of climate must 
have been one of those influences. Still, I am also right in asserting that 
climate alone would not account for the distinctions which exist between 
the Negro and other black races, for I believe that there are lower races 
than even the Negro. Some six years ago, Dr. Hunt read a paper “ On the 
Negro’s place in Nature,” at a meeting of the British Association,— and he 
was almost hooted on reading it at Newcastle ; and in that paper he classed 
the Negro as holding an intermediate position between six lower races and 
six higher ones. Among the higher races would be classed the Hindoo, who, 
however, lives in quite as hot a climate as the Negro, but who is not of so 
coarse a form or so debased in character. There is this peculiarity between 
the other lower races and the Negro, which bears strongly on the point with 
regard to the curse of Canaan, that the other races, instead of being, like the 
Negro, sold for the purpose of being slaves to the rest of the world, are un- 
fitted for servitude, and would actually die out or pine away under slavery. 
You cannot make slaves of the American Indians, or perhaps even of the 
Hindoos, though it would be easier to enslave the Hindoos than the American 
Indians. It is the same with the barbarous races of Australia. None of 
these races seem capable, from their nature and characteristics, of being 
made slaves. Now, I do not at all wish to enter into the emancipation ques- 
tion, but my impression is, that the Negroes were never better off than when 
kindly treated as slaves, and that the greatest tyrants in the world and 
hardest taskmasters are the people of their own race. The curse contained 
in the Scriptures, but which was not at all of the character which Mr. Tit- 
comb seems to attribute to it, stated that they were to be servants or slaves ; 
but there is not a word to indicate that they were to be changed to black. 
Canaan simply was to be the servant, first to his brethren and then to th» 
family of Shem, and then to Japhet the father of the Gentiles. Now, it is 
really the fact that the Africans have been the slaves, both of their own 
people and of other races. The Negro himself is the greatest “ slave-driver” 
in the world ; and to be a slave in Africa is the greatest curse to which a 
man can be subjected. Some writers have said that it was like taking the 
slaves out of a certain place, and transferring them into Paradise when they 
were transported from the cruel slavery of their own country to the slave states 
of America. It is often asked whether we have any instances of a savage 
being greatly improved and raising himself to a high place in the social 
scale. Now, though I think we have proof of great mental improvement 
taking place in isolated cases, still I believe these are only the exceptions 
which prove the rule, and they go also to show that the curse in the Scrip- 
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