5821. NEGROES, Peculiarities.—
To
these objections, which are political, may be
added others, which are physical and moral.
Whether the black of the negro resides in the
reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin,
or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds
from the color of the blood, the color of
the bile, or from that of some other secretion,
the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real
as if its seat and cause were better known to us.
And is this difference of no importance? Is it
not the foundation of a greater or less share
of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine
mixtures of red and white, the expressions of
every passion by greater or less suffusions of
color in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony,
which reigns in the countenances, that
immovable veil of black which covers all the
emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing
hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their
own judgment in favor of the whites, declared
by their preference of them, as uniformly as is
the preference of the Oranootan for the black
woman over those of his own species. The circumstance
of superior beauty, is thought worthy
attention in the propagation of our horses,
dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in
that of man? Besides those of color, figure,
and hair, there are other physical distinctions
proving a difference of race. They have less
hair on the face and body. They secrete less by
the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin,
which gives them a very strong and disagreeable
odor. This greater degree of transpiration renders
them more tolerant of heat, and less of
cold than the whites. Perhaps, too, a difference
of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which
a late ingenious experimentalist (Crawford) has
discovered to be the principal regulator of animal
heat, may have disabled them from extricating,
in the act of inspiration, so much of
that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them
in expiration, to part with more of it.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 381.
Ford ed., iii, 244.
(1782)
