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nce was the extension apace of that intercourse, the offspring whereof became at length so visibly numerous. Among the Romans, the grandest of all colonizers, the individual's Civis Romanus sum--I am a Roman citizen--was something more than verbal vapouring; it was a protective talisman--a buckler no less than a sword. Yet was the possession of this noble and singular privilege no barrier to Roman citizens meeting on a broad humanitarian level any alien race, either allied to or under the protection of that world-famous commonwealth. In the speeches of the foremost orators and statesmen among the conquerors of the then known world, the allusions to subject or allied aliens are distinguished by a decorous observance of the proprieties which should mark any reference to those who had the dignity of Rome's [249] friendship, or the privilege of her august protection. Observations, therefore, regarding individuals of rank in these alien countries had the same sobriety and deference which marked allusions to born Romans of analogous degree. Such magnanimity, we grieve to say, is not characteristic of the race which now replaces the Romans in the colonizing leadership of the world. We read with feelings akin to despair of the cheap, not to say derogatory, manner in which, in both Houses of Parliament, native potentates, especially of non-European countries, are frequently spoken of by the hereditary aristocracy and the first gentlemen of the British Empire. The inborn racial contempt thus manifested in quarters where rigid self-control and decorum should form the very essence of normal deportment, was not likely, as we have before hinted, to find any mollifying ingredient in the settlers on the banks of the Mississippi. Therefore should we not be surprised to find, with regard to many an illicit issue of "down South," the arrogance of race so overmastering the promptings of nature as to render not unfrequent at the auction-block the sight of many a chattel of mixed blood, the offspring [250] of some planter whom business exigency had forced to this commercial transaction as the readiest mode of self-release. Yet were the exceptions to this rule enough to contribute appreciably to the weight and influence of the mixed race in the North, where education and a fair standing had been clandestinely secured for their children by parents to whom law and society had made it impossible to do more, and whom conscience rendered
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