[Footnote 058:  This gentleman is at present resident in England.  The author of this Essay applied to him for some information on the treatment of slaves, so far as his own knowledge was concerned.  He was so obliging as to furnish him with the written account alluded to, interspersed only with such instances, as he himself could undertake to answer for.  The author, as he has never met with these instances before, and as they are of such high authority, intends to transcribe two or three of them, and insert them in the fourth chapter.  They will be found in inverted commas.]

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CHAP.  III.

When the wretched Africans are thus put into the hands of the second receivers, they are conveyed to the plantations, where they are totally considered as cattle, or beasts of labour; their very children, if any should be born to them in that situation, being previously destined to the condition of their parents.  But here a question arises, which, will interrupt the thread of the narration for a little time, viz. how far their descendants, who compose the fifth order of slaves, are justly reduced to servitude, and upon what principles the receivers defend their conduct.

Authors have been at great pains to inquire, why, in the ancient servitude, the child has uniformly followed the condition of the mother.  But we conceive that they would have saved themselves much trouble, and have done themselves more credit, if instead of, endeavouring to reconcile the custom with heathen notions, or their own laboured conjectures, they had shewn its inconsistency with reason and nature, and its repugnancy to common justice.  Suffice it to say, that the whole theory of the ancients, with respect to the descendants slaves, may be reduced to this principle, “that as the parents, by becoming property, were wholly considered as cattle, their children, like the progeny of cattle, inherited their parental lot.”

Such also is the excuse of the tyrannical receivers before-mentioned.  They allege, that they have purchased the parents, that they can sell and dispose of them as they please, that they possess them under the same laws and limitations as their cattle, and that their children, like the progeny of these, become their property by birth.

But the absurdity of the argument will immediately appear.  It depends wholly on the supposition, that the parents are brutes.  If they are brutes, we shall instantly cease to contend:  if they are men, which we think it not difficult to prove, the argument must immediately fall, as we have already shewn that there cannot justly be any property whatever in the human species.