Page:A defence of the negro race in America from the assaults and charges of Rev. J. L. Tucker.djvu/7

 families of the Germanic tribes can as truly be ascribed to the people of the West Coast of Africa. (b) Their maidenly virtue, the instinct to chastity, is a marvel. I have no hesitation in the generalization that, in West Africa, every female is a virgin to the day of her marriage. The harlot class is unknown in all their tribes. I venture the assertion that any one walking through Pall Mall, London, or Broadway, New York, for a week, would see more indecency in look and act than he could discover in an African town in a dozen years. During my residence there I only once saw an indecent act. Of course polygamy—and polygamy is the exceptional fact—brings, in Africa, all its common disastrous fruits: intrigue, unfaithfulness, adultery. But these are human, not Negro, results, cropping out from an unnatural system. (c) And then, when you come to the question of honesty, the state of society in Africa settles that point. Heathen though these people are, their system is a most orderly one—filled everywhere with industrious activities; the intercourse of people regulated by rigid law. The whole continent is a beehive. The markets are held regularly at important points. Caravans, laden with products, are constantly crossing the entire continent; and large, nay at times immense, multitudes are gathered together for sale and barter at their markets. Such a state of society is incompatible with universal theft and robbery.

I know somewhat the reputation of the "Yankee;" and the nature of the Jew has made his name a synonym. But if either Jew or Yankee possesses more of the acquisitive feeling than the native African, then I have failed in my knowledge of human nature.

Of course the wants of the African are inferior to those of the Yankee or the Jew; but that the masterful instinct of greed stimulates the entire continent is witnessed by the strong trading tendencies of almost every tribe; by the