not a man, and a man is not an ass, will probably for ever remain a mystery." "God made the world; God gave thee thy place, my hirsute brother, and, according to all earthly possibilities and probabilities, it is thy destiny there to remain, bray as thou wilt. From the same great power have our sable friends, Messrs. Sambo, Cuffee, & Co., received their position also. . . . Alas, my poor black brother! thou, like thy hirsute friend, must do thy braying in vain."[1]
Are there laws on our statute-books to prevent asses from
being taught to read?
The Richmond Examiner says—
"These immigrants do not, like our ancestors, fly from religious and
political persecution; they come merely as animals in search of a richer
and fresher pasture. They come to gratify physical want—for moral,
intellectual, or religious wants they have not acquired. They will settle
in large masses, and, for ages to come, will practise and inculcate a
pure (or rather impure) materialism. Mormonism is a fit exponent, proof,
and illustration of our theory. The mass of them are sensual, grovelling,
low-minded agrarians, and nine-tenths of them would join the Mormons,
or some such brutal, levelling sect, if an opportunity offered to do so.
"European writers describe a large class of population throughout England and the Continent as being distinguished by restless, wandering, nomadic habits, and by a peculiar conformation of the skull and face. Animal and sensual nature largely predominates, with them, over the moral and intellectual. It is they who commit crimes, fill prisons, and adorn the gallows. They will not submit to the restraints of law or religion, nor can they be educated. From their restless and lawless habits, we should infer they composed a large part of the northern immigration."
If all this were true, and were felt by us to be true, should
we think it necessary to put the minds of these beings in fetters?
Should we hold it to be dangerous if one should undertake
to strengthen their intellects, to give them larger ideas?
If all the slaves in the United States were "real Congo niggers," which not one in a thousand is, and if all real Congo niggers were as incapable, and as beastly, and as savage in their propensities as the very worst of them are asserted to be, would the method of dealing with them which
- ↑ "Resources," vol. ii., pp. 197, 198.
