OCR Text |
Show 200 ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCr. this proximity of what may be termed burm11g fl_mds, and. to the fulphurous and metallick partJcles, wh1ch are continually exhaling from the bowels of the earth, is afcribed the difterent deg.ree of blacknefs, by which fame Africa11 natwns are difiinguilhable from each other though under the f.1me parallels. To the{; obfervations we may add, that though the inhabitants of the fame parallel are not exatUy of the fame hue, yet they differ only by !hades of the fame colour; or, to fpeak with more _rrecilion, that there are no two people, Ill fuch a fituation, one of whom is white, and the. other black. To fum up the whole--Suppofe we were to take a comm~ n globe; to begin at the equator ; to pawt every country along the meridian line in fu:ceffion fro~ thence to the poks ; and to pamt them with the fame colour which prevails in the refpetl:ive inhabitants of each we lhould fee the black, with which we had been ob~iged to begin, infenfibly changing ~o an oli:e, and the olive, through as many wtermed1ate colours, to a white: and if, on the other hand, we lhould complete any p~e of the parallels aq:ording to the fame plan, oF Till: H uMAN SPEC IES. 201 plan, we lhould fee a difterence perhaps .in the appearance of fame of the countnes through which it ran, though the difference would confdl: wholly in !hades of the fame colour. The argument therefore, which is brought ngainfi the hypothelis, is fo far from being an objetl:ion, that we !hall conlider. it as one of the firil: arguments in 1ts favour: for if climate has really an in flu~j'~e on the mucous jubflance of the body, Jt 1S evident, that we muil: not only cxpetl: to fee a gradation of colour in the inhabitan ts from the equator to the poles, but alfo '' different {hades of the fame colour in the inhabitants of the f.1me parallel. To this argument, we {hall add one that is incontrovertible, which is, that when the black inhabitants of Africa are tranfplant- • Suppofc we were to fee two nations, .contiguous to each other, of black and white inhabitants m t~e fame para1\el , even this would be no objeCtion, for many cucumilanc~s are to be confldcrcd. A black people may have wandered uno a white, :md a white people into a black latitude, ~nd they may not have been fcttlcd there a fufficient leng th of tlme for fuch a change to have been ·accomplilhed in their complexion, as that they fhould be like the old eftabliihcd inhabitants of th,e far~\lcl, into which they have lately come, ed |