The characteristics
of the people are the same in all the Antilles, and could be studied
elsewhere."
Now, it is a fact, patent and notorious, that "the characteristics of
the people are" not "the same in all the Antilles." A man of Mr.
Froude's attainments, whose studies have made him familiar with
ethnological facts, must be aware that difference of local
surroundings and influences does, in the course of time, inevitably
create difference of characteristic and deportment. Hence there is
in nearly every Colony a marked dissimilarity of native qualities
amongst the Negro inhabitants, arising not only from the causes above
indicated, but largely also from the great diversity of their African
ancestry. We might as well be told that because the nations of
Europe are generally white and descended from Japhet, they could be
studied one by the light derived from acquaintance with another. We
venture to declare that, unless a common education from youth has
been shared by them, the Hamitic inhabitants of one island have very
little in common with [48] those of another, beyond the dusky skin
and woolly hair.
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