Now we are very anxious not to be misunderstood by our readers.  In writing this paper, we do not mean to urge the reintroduction of Cannibalism among us at once.  The public mind may not yet be ripe for it; but we desire to assist in placing the subject in its proper light, and in showing that an enlightened impartiality can find very much in defence of the Fijians,—­more, indeed, than the Rev. Mr. Froude has been able to accumulate in favor of his wife-devouring hero,—­or than Mr. Spratt can say in favor of humanization in general, and the breaking-up of the Union in particular, by the reopening of the African slave-trade,—­or than our venerable chief-justice has contrived to say in favor of reintroducing slavery in conquered territory, where positive law had abolished or excluded it, by the abstract Constitution itself, proprio vigore, (not quite unlike a wagoner, it seems to us, that carries the soil of distant parts, ipsa adhesione, as it sticks to his boots, into the tavern-room,) without special law, which even the ancient civilians very stupidly declared to be necessary.  First, you will remember, it was passionately maintained that the Constitution of the United States does not know the Common Law; and now it is insisted that Common Law (so far as slavery is concerned) is as inherent in the Constitution as the black pigment is in the negro.  You cannot wash it out; it inheres physiologically in the Constitution.  I tell you, reader, we are fast people indeed; we travel fast in our opinions, with now and then a somerset for the delectation of the philosopher.

Let us sit down, and have a philosophical conversation; above all, let us discard sentiment, feeling,—­what you call heart, and all that sort of thing.  You know how much mischief Las Casas has done by allowing his feelings to interfere when the Spaniards roasted Indians, from what he chose to call diabolical lust of gold, and sheer, abstract cruelty.  Poor Bishop!  He belonged to the softs.  Let us be philosophers, economists, and, above all, Constitutionalists.  Some philosophers, indeed, have said that all idea of Right and Wrong, and the idea that there is a difference between the two, must needs, first of all, start from sentiment; but leave, I implore you, such philosophic fogyism behind you.

First, then, as to the principle of Right.  It is a fact, that most tribes and races, probably all nations in their earliest days, have killed old and useless parents, and have eaten enemies, once slain,—­perhaps friends, too.  Some nations carried the eating of human flesh far down into their civilized periods and into recent times.  The Spaniards found the civilized Aztecs enjoying their petits soupers of babes a la Tartare, or gorgeous dinners on fattened heroes aux truffes.  Have you forgotten that from that fine Introduction to Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico” a flavor of roast “long pig” steams into our nostrils as from a royal kitchen?  Eating our equals, therefore,