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condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the
privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity
throughout Britain answers you--No. When you make men slaves you
deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an
example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with
you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest
or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to
keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are
incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or
moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a
climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree
unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and
incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!--An
assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments
of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to
another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see
the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there
no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in
dread of an insurrection? Nor would it be surprising: for when

"--No peace is given
To us enslav'd, but custody severe;
And stripes and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted--What peace can we return?
But to our power, hostility and hate;
Untam'd reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
In doing what we most in suffering feel."

But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every
cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest,
intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would
attend you.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote O: Thus was I sacrificed to the envy and resentment of this
woman for knowing that the lady whom she had succeeded in my master's
good graces designed to take me into her service; which, had I once
got on shore, she would not have been able to prevent. She felt her
pride alarmed at the superiority of her rival in being attended by a
black servant: it was not less to prevent this than to be revenged on
me, that she caused the captain to treat me thus cruelly.]

[Footnote P: "The Dying Negro," a poem originally published in 1773.
Perhaps it may not be deemed impertinent here to add, that this
elegant and pathetic little poem was occasioned, as appears by the
advertisement prefixed to it, by the following incident. "A black,
who, a few days before had ran away from his master, and got himself
christened, with intent to marry a white woman his fellow-servant,
being taken and sent on board a ship in the Thames, took an
opportunity of shooting himself through the head."]

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