'Enough upon this subject, which has not escaped the attention of the politicians and philosophers of the present age: I have only to apologize for treating it without declamation; but I have always thought, that eloquence can only influence the resolutions of the moment, and that every thing which requires time, must be the work of reason. And besides, it will be an easy matter to add ten or twelve pages to these few reflections, which may be considered as a concert composed only of principal parts, con corni ad libertum.'
Upon reading this passage attentively, I was surprised to find it contain a singular mixture of contradictory principles, and in the same breath, the sentiments of a philosopher and of a colonist; of an advocate for the Negroes, and of their enemy.
It is evident that as a philosopher, and a friend to humanity, you are inclined to alleviate the lot of the Negroes, and commend those who do so, but this tenderness itself conceals a subtile venom that ought to be exposed. For you only bestow your pity upon the Negroes, while you owe them, if you are a philosopher, vindication and defense; you wish their masters to be humane; they ought to be just. Instead of praising such humanity, you ought to have blamed them for stopping there, in short, such a contempt for the Negroes pervades this whole article, as will necessarily encourage their tormentors to rivet their chains. Is not this contempt observable, for instance in the very first period?
"Below this class of inhabitants (the meanest whites of Virginia) we must rank the Negroes, who would be still more to be pitied, if their natural insensibility did not in some measure alleviate the wretchedness inseparable from slavery."
And who told you, Sir, that nature had created the Negroes with less feeling than other men? do you judge so because they have vegetated for three centuries in European fetters, and at this day have not altogether shaken off the horrid yoke? But do not their frequent risings, and the cruelties they from time to time retaliate upon their masters, give the lie to this natural insensibility? for an insensible being has no resentment. If he does not feel, how should he remember? Do you think the wretched Indians, who, since the discovery of the New world, are burried in the mines of Peru, are also naturally insensible, because they suffer patiently?
You calumniate nature in making her grant favours to particulars; in giving her a system of inequality among her offspring. All men are cast in the same mould.--The varieties which distinguish individuals, are the sports of chance, or the result of different circumstances; but the black comes into the world with as much sensibility as the white, the Peruvian, as the European.
What then degrades this natural and moral sensibility? The greater or less privation of liberty; in proportion as man loses it, he loses the powers of sensation; he loses the man; he sickens or becomes a brute. It is slavery alone which can reduce a man to a level with the brute creation, and sometimes deprives him of all sensibility; but you blame nature, that kind parent, who would have us all equal, free and happy, for the crime of social barbarity, and you pass by this crime, to extenuate another, to extenuate the horrid torments of slavery! Not satisfied with violating nature, by abusing her offspring, even in her name, you encourage slaveholders to torment them.
Do you not arm their tyrants, when you tell them, the insensibility of the Negroes alleviates their torments?
What! because greatness of soul raised Sidney above the terrors of death, the infernal Jefferies[1] who caused his execution, was less guilty! because the Quakers appeared insensible to insults, blows, or punishments, they are less to be pitied, and it was right to martyr them! A dangerous notion, whose consequences I am sure you would disapprove. If this insensibility with which you reproach the Negroes mitigated the cruelty of their masters, it were well: but their tormentors do not wish them not to feel; they would have them all feeling, for the pleasure of torturing them; and their punishments are increased in proportion to their insensibility.
Seeing the Negroes, say you, "Ill lodged, ill cloathed, and often overcome with labour, I concluded that their treatment had been as rigorous as it is elsewhere. Notwithstanding I have been assured that it is very mild, compared to what they suffer in the Sugar Colonies."