NEGRO, homo pelle nigra, a name applied to a variety of the human species, entirely black, and found in the torrid zone, especially in that part of Africa which lies within the tropics. In the complexion of negroes we meet with many various shades; but they likewise differ from other men in the features of their face. Round cheeks, high cheek-bones, a forehead somewhat elevated, a short, broad, flat nose, thick lips, small ears, ugliness, and irregularity of shape, characterize their external appearance.

The origin of the negroes, and the cause of their remarkable difference in colour from the rest of the human species, have much perplexed philosophical inquirers. Mr Boyle has observed, that it cannot be produced by the heat of the climate; for although the heat of the sun may darken the colour of the skin, yet experience does not show that it is sufficient to produce a new blackness like that of the negroes. In Africa itself, several nations of Ethiopia are not black; nor were there any blacks originally in the West Indies. In many parts of Asia under the same parallel with the African region inhabited by the blacks, the people are only tawny. Dr Barrière alleges that the gall of negroes is black, and, being mixed with their blood, is deposited between the skin and scarf-skin. Dr Mitchell of Virginia, in the Philosophical Transactions, has endeavoured, by many learned arguments, to prove that the influence of the sun in hot countries, and the manner of life of their inhabitants, are the remote causes of the colour of the negroes, Indians, and other races. Lord Kames, on the other hand, contends, along with many others, that no physical cause is sufficient to change the colour, and the regular features of white men, to the dark hue and the deformity of the negro. The arguments of these writers have been examined with much acuteness and ingenuity by Dr Stanhope Smith of New Jersey, Dr Hunter, and Professor Zimmerman, who have rendered it in a high degree probable that the action of the sun is the original and chief cause of the black colour, as well as of the distorted features, of the negro. In the article Man the reader will find opinions stated which have been advanced in regard to the varieties of the human race.

The most serious charge brought against the poor negroes is, that of the vices which are said to be natural to them. If, indeed, they be such as their enemies represent them, treacherous, cruel, revengeful, and intemperate, by a necessity of nature, they must be of a different race from the whites; for although all these vices abound in Europe, it is evident that they proceed not from nature, but from bad education, which gives to the youthful mind such deep impressions as no future exertions can completely eradicate. Let us inquire coolly if the vices of the negroes may not have a similar origin.

In every part of Africa with which the nations of Europe have any commerce, slavery of the worst kind prevails. Three fourths of the people are slaves to the rest, and the children are born to no other inheritance. Most parts of the coasts differ in their governments; some are absolute monarchies, whilst others approach to an aristocracy. In both the authority of the chief or chiefs is unlimited, extending to life, and it is exercised as often as caprice dictates, unless death is commuted into slavery, in which case the offender is sold; but if the shipping will not buy the person condemned, he is immediately put to death. Fathers of free condition have power to sell their children, but this power is very seldom enforced. In Congo, however, a father will sell a son or daughter, or perhaps both, for a piece of cloth, a collar or girdle of coral or beads, and often for a bottle of wine or brandy. A husband may have as many wives as he pleases, and repudiate or even sell them, though with child, at his pleasure. The wives and concubines, though it be a capital crime for the former to break their conjugal faith, have a way of ridding themselves of their husbands, if they have set their affections upon a new gallant, by accusing them of some crime for which the punishment is death. In a word, the bulk of the people in every state of Africa are born slaves to great men, reared as such, held as property, and as property sold. There are indeed many circumstances by which a free man may become a slave, such as being in debt, and not able to pay; and in some of these cases, if the debt be large, not only the debtor, but his family likewise, become the slaves of his creditor, and may be sold. Adultery is commonly punished in the same manner, both the offending parties being sold, and the purchase-money paid to the injured husband. Obi, or pretended witchcraft, in which all the negroes firmly believe (see Witchcraft), is another, and a very common offence, for which slavery is adjudged as a suitable punishment; and it extends to all the family of the offender. There are various other crimes which subject the offender and his children to be sold; and it is more than probable, that if there were no buyers, the poor wretches would be murdered without mercy.

In such a state of society, what dispositions can be looked for in the people, but cruelty, treachery, and revenge? Even in the civilized nations of Europe, blessed with the lights of law, science, and religion, some of the lower orders of the community consider it as a very trivial crime to defraud their superiors; whilst almost all look up to them with stupid malevolence or rancorous envy. That a depressed people, when they get power into their hands, become revengeful and cruel, the present age affords a dreadful proof in the conduct of the anarchists of a neighbouring nation; and is it wonderful that the negroes of Africa, unacquainted with moral principles, blinded by the crudest and most absurd superstitions, and whose customs tend to eradicate from the mind all natural affection, should sometimes display to their lordly masters of European extraction the same spirit which was so generally displayed by the lower orders of Frenchmen towards their ecclesiastics, their nobles, and the family of their murdered sovereign? When we consider that the majority of the negroes groan under the most cruel slavery, both in their own country, and in every other where they are to be found in considerable numbers, it cannot excite surprise that they are in general treacherous, cruel, and vindictive. Such are the caprices of their tyrants at home, that they could not preserve their own lives or the lives of their families for any length of time, except by a perpetual vigilance, which must necessarily degenerate, first into cunning, and afterwards into treachery; and it is not conceivable that habits formed in Africa should be instantly thrown off in the West Indies, where they become the property of men whom some of them must consider as a different race of beings.

But the truth is, that the bad qualities of the negroes have been greatly exaggerated. Mr Edwards, in his valuable History of the West Indies, assures us that the Mandingo negroes display such gentleness of disposition [7:16:79]and demeanour, as would seem the result of early education and discipline, were it not that, generally speaking, they are more prone to theft than any of the African tribes. It has been supposed that this propensity, amongst other vices, is natural to a state of slavery, which degrades and corrupts the human mind in a deplorable manner; but why the Mandingos should have become more vicious in this respect than the rest of the natives of Africa in the same condition of life, is a question he cannot answer.

“The circumstances which,” according to the same author, “distinguish the Koromantyn or Gold Coast negroes from all others, are firmness both of body and mind; a ferociousness of disposition; but withal, activity, courage, and a stubbornness, or what an ancient Roman would have deemed an elevation of soul, which prompts them to ⅜p- terprises of difficulty and danger, and enables them to meet death, in its most horrid shape, with fortitude or indifference. They sometimes take to labour with great promptitude and alacrity, and have constitutionswell adapted for it; -for many of them have undoubtedly been slaves in Africa. But as the Gold Coast is inhabited by various tribes, which are engaged in perpetual warfare and hostility with each other, there cannot be a doubt that many of the captives taken in battle, and sold in the European settlements, were of free condition in their native country, and perhaps the' owners of slaves themselves. It is not wonderful that such men should endeavour, even by means the most desperate, to regain the freedom of which they have been deprived; nor do I conceive that any further circumstances are necessary to prompt them to action, than that of being sold into captivity in a distant country. One cannot surely but lament,” says our author, “that a people thus naturally intrepid, should be sunk into so deplorable a state of barbarity and superstition; and that their spirits should ever be broken down by the yoke of slavery. Whatever may be alleged concerning their ferociousness and implacability in their present notions of right and wrong, 1 am persuaded that they possess qualities which are capable of, and well deserve, cultivation and improvement.

“Very different from the Koromantyns are the negroes imported from the Bight of Benin, and known in the West Indies by the name of Eboes. So great is their constitutional timidity and despondency of mind, as to occasion them very frequently to seek, in a voluntary death, a refuge from their own melancholy reflections. They require, therefore, the gentlest and mildest treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be once obtained, they manifest as great fidelity, affection, and gratitude, as can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery. The females of this nation are better labourers than the men, probably from having been more hardly treated in Africa.

“The natives of Whidah, who in the West Indies are generally called Papaws i are unquestionably the most docile and best disposed slaves that are imported from any part of Africa. Without the fierce and savage manners of the Koromantyn negtoes, they are also happily exempt from the timid and desponding temper of the Eboes. The cheerful acquiescence with which these people apply to the labours of the field, and their constitutional aptitude for such employment, arise, without doubt, from the great attention paid to agriculture in their native country. Bosman speaks with rapture of the improved state of the soil, the number of villages, and the industry, riches, and obliging manners of the natives. He observes, however, that they are much greater thieves than those of the Gold Coast, and very unlike them in another respect, namely, in the dread of pain, and the apprehension of death. They are, says he, so very apprehensive of death, that they are unwilling to hear it mentioned, for fear that alone should hasten their end; and no man dares to speak of death in the presence of the king, or any great man, under the penalty of suffering it himself, as a punishment for his presumption. He relates further, that they are addicted to gaming beyond any people of Africa. All these propensities are observable in the character of the Papaws in a state of slavery in the West Indies. That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Papaws as the chastisement of legal authority, to which it is their duty to submit patiently. The case seems to be, that the generality of these people are in a state of .absolute slavery in Africa, and, having been habituated to a life of labour, they submit to a change of situation with little reluctance.”

In a word, as the colour,∙and features, and moral qualities of the negroes may be accounted for by the influence of climate and the modes of savage life, so there is good reason to believe that their intellectual endowments may likewise be referred to circumstances, and that they are equal to those of the whites who have been found in the same hapless situation.