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