s does not know the Common Law; and now it is insisted
that Common Law (so far as slavery is concerned) is as inherent in the
Constitution as the black pigment is in the negro. You cannot wash it
out; it inheres physiologically in the Constitution. I tell you, reader,
we are _fast_ people indeed; we travel fast in our opinions, with now
and then a somerset for the delectation of the philosopher.

Let us sit down, and have a philosophical conversation; above all, let
us discard sentiment, feeling,--what you call heart, and all that sort
of thing. You know how much mischief Las Casas has done by allowing his
feelings to interfere when the Spaniards roasted Indians, from what he
chose to call diabolical lust of gold, and sheer, abstract cruelty. Poor
Bishop! He belonged to the softs. Let us be philosophers, economists,
and, above all, Constitutionalists. Some philosophers, indeed, have
said that all idea of Right and Wrong, and the idea that there is
a difference between the two, must needs, first of all, start from
sentiment; but leave, I implore you, such philosophic fogyism behind
you.

First, then, as to the principle of Right. It is a fact, that most
tribes and races, probably all nations in their earliest days,
have killed old and useless parents, and have eaten enemies, once
slain,--perhaps friends, too. Some nations carried the eating of human
flesh far down into their civilized periods and into recent times. The
Spaniards found the civilized Aztecs enjoying their _petits soupers_
of babes _a la Tartare_, or gorgeous dinners on fattened heroes _aux
truffes_. Have you forgotten that from that fine Introduction to
Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" a flavor of roast "long pig" steams into
our nostrils as from a royal kitchen? Eating our equals, therefore,
is sound Common Law of all mankind, even more so than slavery, for it
exists before slavery can be introduced. Slavery is introduced when the
prisoner of war may be made to work,--when the tilling of the soil has
commenced; though then not always; for we now know that slavery was
introduced among the Greeks at a comparatively late period: but killing
parents and eating enemies exists in the hunter's state, and at those
periods when people find it hard work to obtain food, each one for
himself, to keep even a starved body and a little bit of soul together.
Chewing our neighbor is even better, for it is older Common Law, than
the universal buying of a wife and consequen