e African no motive to spur him to action;
no incentive to the acquisition of wealth; no aspiration for power; no
desire for honor or fame. Self reliance and enterprise, are the
peculiar characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race; on the contrary, the
African in his native state, is content with his hut and his palm-leaf
shade, and he is now what he was centuries ago; there is no
improvement or change whatever. The African under no circumstances, in
any part of the habitable globe, has ever attained a high degree of
civilization. "For centuries on centuries, Africa has remained
stationary, and at the very lowest stage of civilization, but one
remove indeed above brutishness." "Back to that merely animal
existence too, the Jamaica blacks are fast retrograding." The African
is constitutionally indolent and improvident. Work he will not, so far
as he is able to avoid it, nor will he economize what falls into his
hands, I do them no injustice. I appeal to facts. Look at the
condition of the free negroes, North and South! Look at Africa--behold
the African race the world over, and then tell me from whence come
their universal poverty, ignorance and degradation. The African
possesses none of that sensitiveness--that acuteness of
sensibility--that delicacy and refinement of taste, which characterize
the white race. There is with the African a predominance of the animal
propensities, and with him, their gratification, constitutes the sum
total of life and all its enjoyments. He knows no other enjoyment, he
has no higher object, or aim. It is therefore, very clear, that
abolitionists are contending for an impracticability; that the two
races cannot amalgamate and become one people, and enjoy equal rights
and privileges; that they cannot live together on terms of perfect
equality. The white man has the pre-eminence; it is the gift of God;
and the African is doomed to servitude, until he is removed beyond the
white man's reach. The African is not fully prepared for the enjoyment
of liberty. Hence, the universal emancipation of the race, supposing
that they were colonized, would be very likely to throw them back into
their original barbarism; and the idea of liberating the entire slave
population of the Southern States, and letting them loose upon us, is
so ridiculous, that it scarcely deserves notice. It would be to us as
a moral pestilence; a plague, far worse than all the plagues of Egypt!
Yes, far worse, than frogs and lice, and lo
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