I will beg leave to say here a few words on the general question of the degeneracy of animals in America. 1.  As to the degeneracy of the man of Europe transplanted to America, it is no part of Monsieur de Buffon’s system.  He goes, indeed, within one step of it, but he stops there.  The Abbe Raynal alone has taken that step.  Your knowledge of America enables you to judge this question; to say, whether the lower class of people in America, are less informed, and less susceptible of information, than the lower class in Europe:  and whether those in America who have received such an education as that country can give, are less improved by it than Europeans of the same degree of education. 2.  As to the aboriginal man of America, I know of no respectable evidence on which the opinion of his inferiority of genius has been founded, but that of Don Ulloa.  As to Robertson, he never was in America; he relates nothing on his own knowledge; he is a compiler only of the relations of others, and a mere translator of the opinions of Monsieur de Buffon.  I should as soon, therefore, add the translators of Robertson to the witnesses of this fact, as himself.  Paw, the beginner of this charge, was a compiler from the works of others; and of the most unlucky description; for he seems to have read the writings of travellers, only to collect and republish their lies.  It is really remarkable, that in three volumes 12mo, of small print, it is scarcely possible to find one truth, and yet, that the author should be able to produce authority for every fact he states, as he says he can.  Don Ulloa’s testimony is of the most respectable.  He wrote of what he saw, but he saw the Indian of South America only, and that, after he had passed through ten generations of slavery.  It is very unfair, from this sample, to judge of the natural genius of this race of men; and after supposing that Don Ulloa had not sufficiently calculated the allowance which should be made for this circumstance, we do him no injury in considering the picture he draws of the present Indians of South America, as no picture of what their ancestors were, three hundred years ago.  It is in North America we are to seek their original character.  And I am safe in affirming that the proofs of genius given by the Indians of North America, place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state.  The North of Europe furnishes subjects enough for comparison with them, and for a proof of their equality.  I have seen some thousands myself, and conversed much with them, and have found in them a masculine, sound understanding.  I have had much information from men who had lived among them, and whose veracity and good sense were so far known to me, as to establish a reliance on their information.  They have all agreed in bearing witness in favor of the genius of this a people.  As to their bodily strength, their manners rendering it disgraceful to labor, those muscles employed in labor will be weaker with them, than with the European