Origin of Civilization—What is Property?—Which is the Best Slave Race [pp. 653-664]

ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION.
LOUISIANA SUBTERFUGE. —Distinguished representatives of
the Administration have intimated that any scheme for pro.
curing the immigration of Africans by their own voluntary act
obligated to labor for a term of years, is a resort to subterfuge
and in bad faith. Such distinguished representatives doubtless overlooked the fact, that our oldest and most faithful ally,
France, has publicly pledged its honor to the good faith and
practicability of the method for the supply of African contract
labor. It might possibly be expedient, but in the Administration it was hardly the most refined comity, to officially infer on
France a national lie. But hers is a foreign Government, and
useless indignities to the first European power on her adoption
of a system of labor which the South can sympathize with and
adopt, are, of course, justifiable. But when Federal officials
recall that the great State of Louisiana, through her Legislature, has inferentially declared that the recent movement for
the supply of African labor is legal, expedient, and practicable,
such officials' eminent sagacity and sense of decorum will, at
once, see the impropriety and indelicacy of rude, insulting, and
indecent insinuations of bad faith, impracticability, and subterfuge, and abandon to the judiciary the decision of questions
between the Federal Government and States or their citizens.
It, however, may in advance be properly said, that those who,
under charter of a State, shall procure the immigration of African laborers, will not flinch from a fair and open trial of the
question of free contracts, voluntary arrivals, and good faith.
ART. Ill.-ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION-WHAT IS PROPERTY P-WHICH IS
THE BEST SLAVE RACE P
THE theories which we are about to propound, we believe,
are original with ourselves. We have heretofore published
them in the Daily Press, and occasionally assumed them as
truths in the pages of this Review. We have not seen in the
Press, or heard in conversation, any denial of their truth, or
any attempt to reply to and refute them; yet, they have not
passed unnoticed, for distinguished scholars and statesmen, as
well from the North as the South, have spoken to us in approbation of themn, and some of the leading papers of the Union
have republished one of them, and intimated approval of the
others. The three subjects are intimately connected, and
should therefore be treated of together.
They are all-important to the well or ill being of society, and
should be presented in such form as to excite general investi
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