erican Road, you
would make a circuit to avoid it.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am happy to say I am not put to the test.
Magnetism, galvanism, electricity, are 'one form of many names.'{2}
Without magnetism we should never have discovered America; to which we
are indebted for nothing but evil; diseases in the worst forms that can
afflict humanity, and slavery in the worst form in which slavery can
cast. The Old World had the sugar-cane and the cotton-plant, though it
did not so misuse them. Then, what good have we got from America? What
good of any kind, from the whole continent and its islands, from the
Esquimaux to Patagonia?

1 Non enim te puto Graecos ludos desiderare: praesertim quum
Graecos ita non ames, ut ne ad villain quidem tuam via
Grasca ire soleas.--Cicero: Ep. ad Div, vii. i.

2 (Greek phrase)--AEschylus: Prometheus.

_Mr. Gryll._ Newfoundland salt-fish, doctor.

The Rev. Dr. Opindan. That is something, but it does not turn the scale.

_Mr. Gryll._ If they have given us no good, we have given them none.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ We have given them wine and classical
literature; but I am afraid Bacchus and Minerva have equally "Scattered
their bounty upon barren ground."

On the other hand, we have given the red men rum, which has been the
chief instrument of their perdition. On the whole, our intercourse with
America has been little else than an interchange of vices and diseases.

_Lord Curryfin._ Do you count it nothing to have substituted civilised
for savage men?

_The Rev, Dr. Opimian._ Civilised. The word requires definition. But
looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the
change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the
Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will
make him. Herein he is the noblest specimen of humanity that ever walked
the earth. Therefore, the white man exterminates his race. But the time
will come when by mere force of numbers the black race will predominate,
and exterminate the white. And thus the worse race will be substituted
for the better, even as it is in St. Domingo, where the Negro has taken
the place of the Caraib. The change is clearly for the worse.

_Lord Curryfin._ You imply that in the meantime the white race is better
than the red.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I leave that as an open question. But I hold,
as some have done before me, that the human mind degener