either case an original inferiority of physical or mental development." Lauzun, 200 years ago, saw the chaos of Genesis in the condition of Ireland. And Desgrigny calls the Irish "such beasts that they have hardly a point of humanity. Nothing moves them. Menaces astonish them not. Even interest cannot engage them in work!" Is not this a case of "special stolidness," or of "arrest of mental development"?
While the Native has been too readily pronounced incapable of civilization—that is, the acceptance of our form of civilization—sufficient apology has not been made for the conservative influence of tribal usages. Bound by the chain of custom, and swayed by the practice of forefathers, it is no less difficult for us to engraft our manners upon the naked savage, than upon the cultivated Hindoo. How could we expect to change the course of thought in such barbarians, when we have succeeded so ill in our teaching elsewhere? and that with races accustomed to think, and dependent upon us! The antagonism of aboriginal traditions and unwritten enactments to our projects of civilization has been thus expressed by Captain (now Sir George) Grey:
"He is in reality subjected to complex laws, which not only deprive him of all free agency of thought, but, at the same time, by allowing no scope for the development of intellect, benevolence, or any other great moral qualification, they necessarily bind him down in a hopeless state of barbarism, from which it is impossible for him to emerge, so long as he is enthralled by these customs, which, on the other hand, are so ingeniously devised as to have a direct tendency to annihilate any effort that is made to overthrow them."
To break through these, after having been subject to such laws, would require the self-denying, self-sacrificing courage which a Jew must exercise to become a Christian. The rarity of success with the latter class should teach us modesty and patience when attempting the civilization of savages.
The effects of our civilizing processes have not always been happy, and have not proved very enduring. The first Aborigines with whom the English were brought in contact were the Indians of North America, and after that Hottentots, Australians, and Tasmanians. The language of Mr. Commissioner Bigge, as applied to Africa, has much force when used in other directions: "I am not aware," wrote he, in 1830, "if any attempt have been
