MEMBERS OF THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF CHARLESTON.

GENTLEMEN

You have permitted me to offer you, as a tribute of my respect, the Natural History of the Negro Race, extracted from the History of Mankind, by Dr. Virey, a French physician; in so doing you have placed the book under the protection of a scientific body, which, unmindful of the differences of religions and countries, admits the foreigner as well as the citizen.

The subject of this book is not altogether foreign to your labours; it treats of that part of the science, which several of you are so thoroughly conversant with, I mean natural history, and of which your lectures delivered last year furnished abundant proofs.

When God placed man at the head of the creation on earth, He did not intend that he should be a stranger to every thing about him. It was granted to him to investigate first causes, observe results, and draw consequences from them. The Almighty gifted man with intelligence by which he understands the relations existing between the objects around him, and which carries them to the mind to be reflected on. He gifted him also with judgment, separating and distinguishing them, imagination shading them with its fanciful and brilliant colors, memory recording and fixing them, spirit by which they are attributed to their celestial Author, reason, in short, which serves to distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil, and establishes an impassable barrier between man, the last created, but the most perfect of all beings on earth, and brutes, over which he exercises unlimited control. One of the principal duties of the christian philosopher is, then, to study in deep meditation the holy mysteries, in which the SovereignCreator of the Universe has hidden all his works,

concealing them from mere curiosity, and revealing them only to the investigation of a persevering intellect.

The knowledge of the works of creation elevates us to that of the Creator; the more we understand them, the more we understand Him. To adore His everlasting power and infinite wisdom, we must open the book of nature, where He has registered those sublime truths which cannot be understood by the atheist or the sceptic, and are revealed to none but the christian philosopher. To become better, let us cast our eyes around us, lower them with humility towards earth, our place of exile and trial, or lift them with rapture towards Heaven, our first and future country. Every where we perceive the harmonious and regulating power by which all beings are governed; every where we see the Supreme wisdom which links them together, and with them forms a great whole, an immense circle of which God is the centre; every where we find the same paternal goodness watching incessantly on the atom invisible to our eyes, and those countless globes rolling silently above our heads, with glorious splendour; if we look at those cold regions seemingly deprived of the divine protection, we soon discover that God has, with an equal kindness provided for the wants of all the beings inhabiting them, as well as for those of the more fertile countries which seem to have received a greater share of the divine love; to think so would be a sacrilegious blasphemy to the creating power, did we not on the instant remark that in those terrestrial paradises, God has placed ferocious animals, venomous plants, and diseases with a long train of infirmities, whilst the very countries which make us shudder from being apparently so plunged in misery and wretchedness, still offer equivalent advantages which the philosopher discovers, and the christian admires.

From the study of the general creation, we are led by degrees to that of man, the last link in the extended chain of beings on earth. Man, a celestial creature stripped of his primitive grandeur, but regenerated by the baptism of the blood of our Redeemer; man, a mysterious compound

of good and evil, shame and glory, reason and stupidity, wisdom and error; man, bowed down under the thraldom of ignorance, or taking by his thoughts a high flight, far beyond the limits to which his material conformation fetters him, such is the study in which we must be deeply engaged. From this, we come to that of social institutions among men, either in a state of civilization or barbarism, and it belongs to you to investigate the good or evil which may be derived from them, according to the situation of the nation by which they are adopted.

When in every country we see overflowing the two streams called liberty and equality, in which have been lost so many utopias of social improvement, so many philantrophic dreams where better is always an enemy to good; when by a sad mistake of the natural order of things, the name of liberty has been given to licence, and that of equality to levelling; it behooves you to investigate,if truly these two principles, the main-springs of human actions, are to be found in nature, and if they do not even oppose the designs of the Creator. If we consider man in his moral relations. we find as a proof of this inequality, intellect posed to idiotism, virtue to vice, genius to brutishness, covetousness to prodigality, obedience to command: on one hand, chiefs, kings, sovereigns; on the other, inferiors and subjects. We find infancy under the guardianship of manhood, woman subjected to man, the slave to his mas

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Should we consider man in his natural relations, we find youth opposed to old age, ugliness to beauty, weakness to strength, health to suffering. Do we speak of liberty, to mention only a few instances, we find among the mos polished and civilized nations of Europe, here a youth torn from the arms of a sickly father or an aged mother, subject to the iron rod of discipline, and expiring from misery and fatigues, either under the brazen skies of the north, or on the burning sands of Africa. There the peaceable inhabitant of the cities, or the poor husbandman, hurried away by the horrid press-gang, from his humble abode or

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tranquil cottage, weeps for his children and his wife; he finds himself on a man-of-war, and hears nothing but the whistle of command, and the roaring of the waves,-if he dies, his tomb is the vast ocean, or if mutilated, he receives the royal honor of a retreat at Greenwich-in country, man is born a soldier; at every instant of his life he must account for his blood; he is doomed to war, as in a sheep-fold, sheep are marked for the slaughter-house; except perhaps the time of his infancy, or when he is bowed down under the weight of years. In another country a despot speaks, and at his command millions of his subjects are seen marching in numerous battalions, and drawn into battle array, soon to be destroyed by the fire of artillery.

Social equality is but a hollow sound, or rather the echo of the thunder; it is a soft breeze ending amidst the yells of riots and revolutions, a flickering light, hardly perceptible at first, and bursting soon after into a vast conflagration. Let the distinctions of ranks be destroyed, and society can exist no longer-chaos begins, and all is confused; society is but a labyrinth, where law and right, groping their way in the dark, are immediately lost; it is but an absurd community, in which the muscular power ranks superior to intelligence.

If in nature are seen summits and abysses, if uniformity is contrary to its laws, if every thing must constantly change, rise or fall, increase or decrease, if in its kingdoms all is progression and amelioration, who can affirm that the differences remarked among the various species of men are contrary to the order of nature, and that God, in his mysterious ways, did not design to give to the white man a superior intellect, and power over all other races, to the red man cunning and patience, to the black man senses more active than his intellectual faculties, and a timorous and servile mind? Why has God colored so differently and distinctively all human races? Why the differences observed in their natural organization, not only as individuals, but as nations, if the same do not exist also in their intellect? Finaly, if we admit that the soul is superior to

the body, which is but its material envelope, we will readily admit that intellect is also superior to the human passions, and the more man lives by his mind, the more he rises above all others who indulge only in sensual pleasures. Let this principle be applied to the various races of men on earth, and we will acknowledge that the most intelligent must command the others.

In every civilized country, and in all ages, the legislator has marked a period during which man is subject to the authority or guardianship of another. Why is such a power given over him? Why this guardianship? Why that sort of slavery? It is that from his infancy up to his manhood, his intellectual faculties, being not strong enough, or matured by experience, it would be imprudent, immoral, I may say, to abandon to himself, without any control or restraint, a being incapable of governing his passions. Who sees there an injustice?

The experience of the past has proved, and proves also every day, that the negro race cannot be formed under any monarchical or republican government, and that negroes are incapable of governing themselves without falling into

excesses.

When I present you, gentlemen, with this book, I am not blind to the faults of language to be met with in it, nor to the incorrect expressions which betray the foreigner, and the tautology of many of its parts; but I feel quite confident you will grant your indulgence to a Frenchman, who coming among you five years ago, ignorant even of the first elements of your language, and having studied it without any assistance, has been able, by his own exertions, to understand this language so nervous and concise in Shakspeare, so melodious and sweet in Pope, so pure and logi cal in Addison, and so simple and natural in Goldsmith; this language in which Patrick Henry thundered in your capitol, with which Washington Irving breathes his soft notes, and which lends to Miss Sedgwick the roses of the immortal wreath which covers her noble brow. J. H. GUENEBAULT.