The Industrial Resourses, etc.., of the Southern and Western States.
Samuel George Morton (see “Observations of the size of the Brain in Various Races and Fameilies of Man,” Philadelphia, 1849) has ascertained that the negro's brain is nine cubic inches less than the white man's. Lately; some attempts have been made by British abolitionists to distort the facts of science,by representing the African brain as equal to that of the European, and the mind of the former equal to the latter. A certain Dr. Robert Bentley Todd, of King's College, London, in a work on the “Observations of the Brain, Spinal Cord, and Ganglions,” (London, 1845,) endeavors to throw some doubt and uncertainty on the received and wellestablished facts in regard to the inferiority of the negro's intellect, the comparative smallness of his brain, and the larder size of his nerves. Also, James Cowles Pritchard, another British writer, author of the “Researches on the Physical History of Mankind,” in four volumes, (London, 1844,) an abolition work, disguised under the pretense that the authority of the Bible would be impeached if the great differences that natural historians and comparative anatomists professed to have discovered in mankind were not called in question.
Pritchard...does not seem to be aware of what Cardinal Wiseman justly observes, “that it is only half-way science and half-way truths that militate against the authority of the Bible.” The whole truth, when brought out, and perfect freedom of science to pursue its investigations untrammelled to its terminus, have, in every instance, demonstrated the truth of the Bible; while imperfect investigations and the omission of the truth, or the tying science down to the narrow interpretations of biblical commentators, have generally led to skepticism and infidelity. Pritchard seems to be so much afraid that if the differences which Malpighi, Scemmerring, Cuvier, and other comparative anatomists have discovered in the negro's organization, approximating him to the monkey tribes, be admitted, the Bible will be invalidated, that he has taken much pains to try to overturn general truths and principles by partial exceptions. He adduces instances to prove that white persons have turned black, in whole or in part, and that the negro's skin has, in some instances, turned white. But he ought to know that the change of color in all such cases is the effect of disease. Dr. Rush was so much afraid that the black skin, thick lips, and flat nose of the negro would invalidate the Mosaic account of the creation of man, and the unity of the human family, that he published in the Medical Repository (vol. iv., p. 409) some suggestions, attributing the black color, thick lips, and flat nose to a disease resembling leprosy. But observation proved that, so far from the black color being caused by disease, the blackest negroes were always the healthiest, and the thicker the lips, and the fatter the nose, the sounder the constitution.
Both Pritchard and Todd labor to prove by a few cases, exceptions to the general rule, that the brain of the negro and his mental capacity are equal to the white man, lest the Scriptures be invalidated, if any inferior slave race be admitted. They overlooked the fact that the Mosaic history distinctly specifies an inferior slave race of people, called Canaanites, Gibeonites, &c., and that these people were reduced to slavery, and their country taken from them, by Divine command.