Let this mode of viewing the question be compared with that of the monogenists, and let it be asked which of the two modes is more apt to please the defenders of slavery. If all men are descendants of one couple,--if the inequality of races has been the result of a curse more or less merited,--or again, if the one have degraded themselves, and have allowed the torch of their primitive intelligence to become extinct, whilst the other have carefully guarded the precious gift of the Creator,--in other words, if there be cursed and blessed races,--races which have obeyed the voice of nature and races which have disobeyed it,--then the Rev. John Bachmann is right to say that slavery is a Divine right; that it is a providential punishment; and that it is just, to a certain point, that those races who have degraded themselves should be placed under the _protection_ of others,--to borrow an ingenious euphemism from the language of the defenders of slavery.[88] But if the Ethiopian is king of Soudan by the same right as the Caucasian is king of Europe, what right has he to impose laws upon the former, unless by the right of might? In the first case, slavery presents itself with a certain appearance of legitimacy which might render it excusable in the eyes of certain theoricians; in the second case, it is a fact of pure violence, protested against by all who derive no benefit from it. From another point of view, it might be said that the polygenist doctrine assigns to the inferior races of humanity a more honourable place than in the opposite doctrine. To be inferior to another man either in intelligence, vigour, or beauty, is not a humiliating condition. On the contrary, one might be ashamed to have undergone a physical or moral degradation, to have descended the scale of beings, and to have lost rank in creation. FOOTNOTES: [1] Gobineau, _Inégalité des Races Humaines_, 8vo, Paris, 1855; [also translated into English, _On the Inequality of Human Races_, and edited by Henry Hotze, 8vo. EDITOR.] [2] “The sole action of the laws of Hybridity,” says Nott, “might exterminate the whole human species if all the various types of human beings actually existing on the earth were completely to amalgamate.” _Types of Mankind_, p. 407, eighth edit., Philadelphia, 1857. Dr. Robert Knox is not less explicit. “I do not believe that any Mulatto race can be maintained beyond the third or fourth generation by _Mulattos merely_; they must intermarry with the pure races or perish.” Robert Knox, _The Races of Men_, London, 1850. [3] Georges Pouchet, _De la Pluralité des Races Humaines_, p. 140, Paris, 1858. [A translation of this work will shortly be published by the Anthropological Society of London, edited by T. Bendyshe, Esq., M.A., F.A.S.L. EDITOR.] [4] Prichard, _Natural History of Man_. [5] Davis and Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, p. 7, No. 4, London, 1856.