Mr. Guthrie, in his account of Africa from the tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, says, “The history of this continent is little known, and probably affords no materials which deserve to render it more so. We know from the antients, who sailed a considerable way round the coasts, that the inhabitants were in _the same rude situation_ near 2000 years ago in which they are at present; that is, they had _nothing of humanity_ about them _but the form_. This may either be accounted for by supposing, that nature has placed some insuperable barrier between the natives of this division of Africa and the inhabitants of Europe; or that the former, being so long accustomed to a savage manner of life, and degenerating from one age to another, at length became altogether incapable of making any progress in civility or science. It is very _certain_ that all the attempts of the Europeans, particularly of the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, have been hitherto ineffectual for making the least impression on these savage mortals, or giving them the least inclination or even idea of the European manner of life.” All other writers on this subject agree in these relations, or furnish others similar to them: nor have I been able to find one author, by whom I could discover that there was any sort of plan or system of morality conceived by these tribes of Africa, or practised among them. Their barbarity to their children debases their nature even below that of brutes. Their cruelty to their aged parents is of a kin to this. They have a religion, it is true: but it is a religion which seems the effect only of outward impressions, and in which neither the head nor the heart have any concern. They have laws founded on principles, which plainly prove the defective use of the _moral sense_, as appears in this instance among the rest. Their Judges are judges and executioners at one and the same time. When a criminal is condemned by them, the Chief Justice first strikes him with a club, and then all the rest of the Judges fall upon him, and drub him to death; and neither this, nor any other of their customs, can time make any alteration in, nor precept nor example amend. Indeed, if it were otherwise, it would perhaps be unnatural: for the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the Leopard his spots. From this then, my Lord, I infer, that the measure of these beings may be as compleat, as that of any other race of mortals; filling up that space in life beyond the bounds of which they are not capable of passing; differing from other men, not in _kind_, but in _species_; and verifying that unerring truth of Mr. Pope, that “Order is Heaven’s first law; and this confest, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest:”