The tests by which we recognise the claims of the outcast and degraded of our own coun try to a common humanity, are surely the same as those by which we should estimate the true relation of the Negro, the Bushman, or the Australian, to the cultivated European. We must not judge of their capabilities solely by their manner of life, however wretched that may be ; since this is often, in great degree, forced upon them by external circum stances. Nor have we any right to pronounce them incapable of entertaining any particular class of ideas, simply because we cannot find the traces of these in their existing forms of expression. It is only when such people have been attentively studied — not by passing travellers, who, though they may pick up a little of their language, see little of their inner life, —but by residents who have suc ceeded in gaining acquaintance with habits which a jealous reserve would conceal, and ideas which the imperfections of language render most difficult of transmission *, that we have any right to affirm what they are ; and even this amount of information affords little means of judging what they may be come.
It will be only when the effect of education, intellectual, moral, and religious, has been fairly tested, that we shall be entitled to speak of any essential and constant psychical differ ence between ourselves and the most degraded beings clothed in a human form. It will only be when the influence of a perfect equality in civilisation and social position has been in effectually brought to bear upon them for several consecutive generations, that we shall be entitled to say, of the Negro or of any other race, that it is separated by an " impassable barrier" from those which arrogate to them selves an inalienable superiority in intellectual and moral endowments. All our present knowledge on this subject tends to show that no such barrier exists, and that there is a real community of psychical characters among the different races of men ; the differences in the degree of their positive and relative de velopment, not being greater than those which exist in the successive or contemporaneous varieties of our own race. And it may be added, too, that in almost every instance, the more we learn concerning any particular nation or tribe reputed to possess the meanest possible aspect of humanity, the more we generally have to recede from the harshness of our first impressions.
A very striking example of the near affinity that may exist between the most degraded " outcasts of humanity," and races consider ably advanced in civilisation and intelligence, is presented by the relationship of the Bush men of the Cape of Good Hope to the Hot tentot population which tenanted that region previously to the arrival of European colonists. The following is a graphic account recently given of them by one who has had ample opportunities of observation :—" The Dutch Boer, the Griqua, the Bechuana, the Kaffir, all entertain the same dread of, and aversion to, these dwarfish hordes, who, armed with their diminutive bows and poisoned arrows, recklessly plunder and devastate, without regard either to nation or colour, and are in their turn bunted down and destroyed like beasts of prey, which in many respects they so nearly resemble. . . . Time, a knowledge of, and an occasional intercourse with, people more civilised than themselves, have made little change in the habits and disposition of this extraordinary race. The Bushman still
continues unrelentingly to plunder, and cruelly to destroy, whenever the opportunity presents itself. His residence is still amongst inacces sible hills, in the rude cave or cleft of the rock—on the level karroo, in the shallow burrow, scooped out with a stick, and shel tered with a frail mat. He still, with deadly effect, draws his diminutive bow, and shoots his poisoned arrows against man and beast. Disdaining labour of any kind, he seizes when he can on the farmers' herds and flocks, recklessly destroys what he cannot devour, wallows for consecutive days with vultures and jackals amidst the carcases of the slain, and, when fully gorged to the throat, slumbers in lethargic stupor like a wild beast, till, aroused by hunger, he is compelled to wander forth again in quest of prey. When he can not plunder cattle, he eagerly pursues the denizens of the waste,feasts indifferently on the lion or the hedgehog, and, failing such dainty morsels, philosophically contents him self with roots, bulbs, locusts, ants, pieces of hide steeped in water, or, as a last resource, he tightens his girdle of famine,' and, as Pringle says, ' He lays him down, to sleep away, In languid trance, the weary day.' Whether this precarious mode of existence may, or may not, have influenced the personal appearance and stature of the Bushmen it is difficult to say, but a more wretched-looking set of beings cannot easily be imagined. The average height of the men is considerably under five feet, that of the women little ex ceeding four. Their shameless state of nearly complete nudity, their brutalised habits of voracity, filth, and cruelty of disposition, ap pear to place them completely on a level with the brute creation, whilst the • clicking' tones of a language, composed of the most unpro nounceable and discordant noises, more re semble the jabbering of apes than sounds uttered by human beings."* Now, there is ample evidence that the Cape Bushmen are a degraded caste of the IIotten tot race. They agree with the Hottentots in all the peculiarities of physiognomy, cranial conformation, &c., by which the latter are cha racterised; and a careful comparison of the languages of the two races has shown that there is an essential affinity between them. It has been ascertained by Dr. Andrew Smith, that many of the Bushman hordes vary their speech designedly, by affecting a singular mode of utterance (employing the peculiar clapping or clicking of the tongue, which is characteristic of the Hottentot language, so incessantly, that they seem to be giving utter ance to a jargon consisting of an uninterrupted succession of claps), and even adopting new words, in order to make their meaning unin telligible to all but the members of their own community. According to the same autho rity, nearly all the South African tribes who have made any advances in civilisation, are surrounded by more barbarous hordes, whose abodes are in the wilderness and in the fast nesses of mountains and forests, and who con stantly recruit their numbers by such fugitives as crime and destitution may have driven from their own more honest and thriving communities. In this manner it has happened that within a comparatively recent period many tribes of Hottentots have beers de graded into Bushmen, through the oppres sions to which they have been subjected at the hands of their more civilised neighbours.