To the harsh definition of the naturalist, oppressions political and legislative have been added; and such are hourly aggravated towards this unhappy race of men by vulgar prejudice and popular insult. To combat these on commercial principles, has been the labour of Labat, Ferman, and Bennezet—such an effort here would be an impertinent digression.
Of those who have speculatively visited and described the slave-coast, there are not wanting some who extol the mental abilities of the natives. D’Elbée, Moore, and Bosman, speak highly of their mechanical powers and indefatigable industry. Desmarchais does not scruple to affirm, that their ingenuity rivals the Chinese.
He who could penetrate the interior of Africa, might not improbably discover negro arts and polity, which could bear little analogy to the ignorance and grossness of slaves in the sugar islands, expatriated in infancy, and brutalized under the whip and the taskmaster.
And he who surveys the extent of intellect to which Ignatius Sancho had attained by self-education, will perhaps conclude, that the perfection of the reasoning faculties does not depend on a peculiar conformation of the scull or the colour of a common integument, in defiance of that wild opinion, “which,” says a learned writer of these times, “restrains the operations of the mind to particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit.”
LETTERS.
LETTER I.
TO MR. J— W——E.
Charles Street, Feb. 14, 1768.
MY WORTHY AND MUCH RESPECTED FRIEND,
POPE observes,