t selling of daughters which
exists even now over far the greater portion of the globe. We take it
that our species began with eating itself without paying for the fare.
Partaking of our neighbor precedes all _lex scripta_, all statute law,
all constitutions. As to ourselves in particular, whose law is the
English law, we know that the Druids sacrificed human beings to their
gods; and every one knows full well, that man, when in gastronomic
contact with the gods, always appropriates the most savory morsels
and the largest portions of the sacrifice to himself, leaving to the
ethereal taste of Jove or Tezcatlipoca the smell of some burnt bones or
inwards. Yet there is no law on record abolishing human sacrifices. We
know, indeed, that some Teutonic tribes, when they adopted Christianity,
positively prohibited the eating of horse-flesh, but no law ever forbade
to honor our fathers and mothers by making them parts of our feasts; so
that no lawyer of the true sort will deny, that, to this day, the right
of sacrificing fellow-men, and the reasonable concomitant of eating the
better portion of the sacrifice, still exists. Greeks and Romans have
sacrificed men; why should not we? That men have their individual rights
is no valid objection. Rights depend exclusively upon the law; and the
law, we have shown, does not grant equal rights (at least, not equal
destinations) to the Eater and the Eatee; for it seems to be one thing
to eat, and another to be eaten. It was a very silly maxim of the
ancient Civil Law, That the law, the _regula_, is derived from the right
(_jus_), not the _jus_ from the law. Has not a Supreme Court in one of
our States lately denied to a negro even the right to choose between
liberty and slavery,--the choice being left to him by his deceased
master,--because the creature (which, when doing wrong, is responsible
and has a will imputed to him) has no will to choose, because it cannot
have any, says the Supreme Court of that State?

However, it will doubtless be objected by some, that it is simply
disgusting to eat our fellow-creatures of the same species,--that it is
unnatural and against our religion,--and that so remarkable a diversity
of taste can be explained only on the ground of our belonging to
different races. We do not believe that the Fijians belong to a
different race. Fijian, or Fijician, results, by a slight change of
letters, from the word Phoenician; and there can be no doubt that
the Fijians