Gospel, is frequently abstracted from the subject in the semi-contemplation of corporeal banqueting! Who were the first to introduce ardent spirits amongst the aborigines of America? Who but the missionaries? The pious disciples, feeding upon fish and venison, and enjoying the highest luxuries afforded in the wigwams of an Indian village, added the hilarious excitement of rum to the simple feast of the savage: in this way, the latter imbibed his propensity, his unquenchable thirst, for this deleterious beverage, the indulgence in which, connected with corresponding causes, produced that acknowledged demoralization, and individual decrease, which bids fair, at no distant period, to extinguish the unadulterated race of Red men! Where are now the Narraghansetts, who to the number of 12,000 peopled Rhode Island? In what is now the small state of Maine, 11,000 Indians were formerly to be found; while in New England were the tribes of the Massachusetts, the Pawtucketts, and the Pokanoketts, each nation consisting of several numerous tribes. A powerful nation supported themselves on the banks of the Connecticut river; the Mohawks and the Five Nations inhabited the state of New York. The southern states were more populous: the Creeks, the Cherokees, and the Yamassees, inhabited Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The Delawares and the Shawanees lived in the Ohio territory. Where are they all now? A few Creeks may

be found at the back of Georgia, so much mingled, however, with white blood, that the genuine Indian is no longer to be perceived amongst them. A few Mohawks are to be found in Canada, as well as on the territory of the United States; but out of 2,000,000 natives, computed to have been spread over the vast surface of North America, the number of those driven back, and struggling to maintain a lingering existence, are

supposed scarcely to amount to 200,000. Many nations have perished even in name. Savage life withers on the approach of civilization: wherever the white man sets his foot, the children of the forest fade before him, sink into nothingness, and become extinct! Such is the influence of that system of education which the daring European offers to his less enlightened fellowcreature!

That such must always be the case is too abundantly evident to need elaborate demonstration in this place; and as to what is called civilizing the savages, nothing can be more absurd, at least as far as relates to religious missions: the savage, inasmuch as his physiological organization is very inferior to that of the white man, is insusceptible of that superior degree of civilization for which the latter has been remarkable from the earliest periods to the present time; yet it does not hence result, that the condition of the former might not be much improved under judicious superintendence and direction, but very different means must be employed for this purpose than the introduction of ignorant and sinister missionaries, men who are as incapable of forming a due estimate of human character, as they are of taking an enlarged, or even an amiable, view of society in general-whose presence has uniformly proved the precursor of dissension and discord. The naked Indian, incapable of extending his views beyond the simple wants of his existence, is but very indifferently calculated (at least in the first instance) to receive even the fundamental principles of a system, on all hands acknowledged to be beyond the reach of human comprehension in its higher departments, and upon which so much diversity of opinion exists as to the minor consideration of external observance, and doctrinal exposition. Hence arises the abuse of the mild dispensation

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of Christianity; and hence the savage is tortured by the various sects of missionaries till he can scarcely fail to despise the whole, and reject a system which admits of such startling anomalies or differences of opinion; which is converted to the basest purposes by designing knaves, who have contrived to spread themselves over the surface of the earth.

If the untutored children of nature are to receive benefit from the hand of the white man; if attempts are to be made to ameliorate their condition; to reclaim them from wandering in the forests, exposed to those sufferings which result from their precarious mode of existence, to the comforts of a settled abode; we must not commence with the mysteries of revealed religion and their almost innumerable diversity of sectarian interpretations; on the contrary, their first lesson or lecture should be on the simple arts of civilized life, rendered clear to their comprehension by the practical and progressive evidence of facts.

We have agitation enough amongst the various sectarians at home, without sending them to disturb the comparative happiness of the Indians; for, since such uncharitable feelings are cherished, such fierce contentions raised, where overbearing dogmatism supplies the place of calm reason and deliberate reflection, is it likely that the vermin-like swarms of lank-haired locusts, which are annually vomited from the European shores, can enlighten the religious darkness of the tribes of America-when they cannot agree amongst themselves, nor establish the truth of one single ramification of their conjectural hypotheses upon anything like demonstrative truth, leaving mathematical certainty out of the question?

I am positively astonished that any person capable of the least reflection should subscribe so small a trifle

even as the widow's mite towards missionary speculations; and above all, I feel surprised that many of our clergymen of the church establishment should lend their influence in the promotion of so unprincipled and so base a delusion—so gross a fraud upon the well-meaning liberality of that part of the public, who thoughtlessly contribute pecuniary assistance for the furtherance of an object which they are told by others will benefit their less enlightened, and consequently less fortunate, fellow-creatures. Are they culpably unwilling, or too carelessly indolent, to investigate before they sanction? The real object is scarcely concealed beneath the flimsy veil of sectarian hypocrisy; and therefore no extraordinary degree of sagacity or laborious investigation would be requisite to expose the base and fraudulent delusion.

I now come to the lowest class of human nature, the Ethiopian variety; which, like all the preceding classifications, will be found modified according to countries or circumstances. The skin and eyes are black; the hair black and woolly; the skull compressed laterally and thrown much behind; the forehead low, narrow, and retiring; the cheek bones prominent; the jaws projecting; the upper front teeth oblique; chin receding. The eyes are prominent; the nose broad, thick, flat, and confused with the extended jaws; the lips, and particularly the upper one, are thick.

The animal organization of the Negro is distinctly marked, and presents a striking contrast to the form of the white man. The head is thrown further behind, and the posterior part of the cranium overhangs the back, which appears hollow from the regressive or backward position of the shoulders. The arms are long, the thighs are ill-formed, the shins project, the

heels are long, and the leg appears, as it were, fixed in the middle of the foot. The Negro may be regarded as the descending link in the chain of nature which unites the human being to the brute creation.

From the accounts of Park, Edwards, and others, I have little doubt that the Foulahs sprung from the union of the Moors and the Negroes. They are not so black as their semi-brethren of the Gold Coast; their hair is not woolly, but crisp and bushy; their lips are not so thick, or their noses so flat; nor do their skins exude that peculiar fetid effluvium for which the jetty race is remarkable. The Eboes, from the Bight of Benin, according to Edwards, are the lowest and most wretched of all the nations of Africa. "I cannot help observing, too, (says he,) that the conformation of the face, in a great majority of them, very much resembles that of the baboon." Or, rather, he ought to have said, of the ouran-outang.

Intercourse with other nations has produced deviations from the original form and colour of the Negro or the Ethiopian, as we perceive exemplified in the Foulah; and therefore in forming our estimate of the character of this decidedly lowest and most inferior variety of the human race, due regard must be paid to any adventitious introduction of white or other blood. In the north of Africa, the aboriginal Berber tribes, and subsequently the Arabian conquerors, as well as the Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and Turkish colonists, must have mingled with the Negroes. On the east, the kingdom of Abyssinia, though at present professing the Christian religion, is of Arabian origin, and traces of the same people are found along the coast nearly as far as the Cape. Europeans, and the Portuguese in particular, have possessed settlements on the west coast of