Forsake me at my need for being the author;
For ’tis a deed of night, of night, Francisco!
In which the memory of all good actions
We can pretend to shall be buried quick;
Or, if we be remembered, it shall be
To fright posterity by our example,
That have outgone all precedents of villains
That were before us.”[215]
Recognizing such a power, entering into semi-alliance with such a power, investing such a power with rights, opening ports to such a power, surrendering workshops to such a power, building ships for such a power, driving a busy commerce with such a power,—all this, or any part of this, is positive and plain complicity with the original guilt, and must be judged as we judge any other complicity with Slavery. To say that it was a necessity is only to repeat the perpetual plea by which slave-masters and slave-traders from the earliest moment have sought to vindicate their crime. A generous Englishman, the ornament of letters, from whom we learn in memorable lines “what constitutes a State,” has denounced all complicity with Slavery in words which strike directly at this plea of necessity. “Let sugar be as dear as it may,” wrote Sir William Jones to the freeholders of Middlesex, “it is better to eat none,—to eat honey, if sweetness only be palatable,—better to eat aloes or coloquintida, than violate a primary law of Nature impressed on every heart not imbruted by avarice, than rob one human creature of those eternal rights of which no law upon earth can justly deprive him.”[216]