It is affirmed again, that their manner of life, and their situation is such in their own country, that to say they are happy is a jest.  “But who are you, who pretend to judge[103] of another man’s happiness?  That state which each man, under the guidance of his maker, forms for himself, and not one man for another?  To know what constitutes mine or your happiness, is the sole prerogative of him who created us, and cast us in so various and different moulds.  Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhappiness, amidst their native woods and desarts?  Or, rather, let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their lordly masters?  Where they see, indeed, the accommodations of civil life, but see them all pass to others, themselves unbenefited by them.  Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness, and then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a part.”

But since you speak with so much confidence on the subject, let us ask you receivers again, if you have ever been informed by your unfortunate slaves, that they had no connexions in the country from which they have forcibly been torn away:  or, if you will take upon you to assert, that they never sigh, when they are alone; or that they never relate to each other their tales of misery and woe.  But you judge of them, perhaps, in an happy moment, when you are dealing out to them their provisions for the week; and are but little aware, that, though the countenance may be cheered with a momentary smile, the heart may be exquisitely tortured.  Were you to shew us, indeed, that there are laws, subject to no evasion, by which you are obliged to clothe and feed them in a comfortable manner; were you to shew us that they are protected[104] at all; or that even one in a thousand of those masters have suffered death[105], who have been guilty of premeditated murder to their slaves, you would have a better claim to our belief:  but you can neither produce the instances nor the laws.  The people, of whom you speak, are slaves, are your own property, are wholly at your own disposal; and this idea is sufficient to overturn your assertions of their happiness.

But we shall now mention a circumstance, which, in the present case, will have more weight than all the arguments which have hitherto been advanced.  It is an opinion, which the Africans universally entertain, that, as soon as death shall release them from the hands of their oppressors, they shall immediately be wafted back to their native plains, there to exist again, to enjoy the sight of their beloved countrymen, and to spend the whole of their new existence in scenes of tranquillity and delight; and so powerfully does this notion operate upon them, as to drive them frequently