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Show 212 ON THE SLAVERY AND CoMMERCE nccumulaling fluid, we can account for the different degrees of it to be found in the different inhabitants of the globe. For as the quantity of perfpirable fluid, and the force of the folar rays is fucceffivcly increafed, as the climates are fucceffively warmer, from any given parallel to the line, it follows that the fluid, with which the mucous fubjlancc will be fl:ained, will be fucceffively thicker and deeper coloured; and hence, as it appears through the cuticle, the complexion fucceffively darker; or, what amounts to the fame \!_1ing, there will be a dift"erence of colour in the inhabitants of every fucceffive parallel. From thefe, and the whole of the preceding obfervations on the fubjetl:, we may conclude, that as all the inhabitants of the earth cannot be otherwife than the children of the fame parents, and as the difference of their appearance mull: have of courfe proceeded from incidental caufes, thefe caufes are a combination of thofe qualities, which we call cltinate; that the blacknefs of the Africans is fo far in grafted in their confl:itution, in a courfe of many generations, or THE HuMAN SPECIES. 213 generations, that their children wholly inherit it, if brought up in the fame fpot, but that it is not fo abfolutely interwoven in their nature, that it cannot be removed, if they are born and fettled in another; that Noah and his fans were probably of an olive complexion; that thofc of their defcendants, who went farther to the fouth, became of a deeper olive or copper; while tho(e, who went frill farther, became of a deeper copper or black; th,,t thofe, on the other hand, who travelled farther to the north, became lefs olive or brown while thofe who went fl:ill farther than the fo~mer, became lcfs brown or white; and that if any man were to point out any one of the colours which prevails in the human complexion, as likely to furni!h an argument, that the people of fuch a complexion were of a different fpecies from the reil:, it is probable that his own defc_endant~, if reploved to the climate to which this complexion is peculiar, would, in _the courfe of a few generations, degenerate mto the fame colour. Having now replied to the argument,. " that the Africans are an inferiour link of 0 3 " the |