—­Anburey, "Travels through America during the War,” Vol. 2, pp. 330-5.

VINDICATION OF THE NEGROES:  A CONTROVERSY

First let me repeat your longest section relative to that people.

’Below this class of inhabitants, (the whites of no property, in 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.  Seeing them ill lodged, ill clothed, 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.  And indeed one does not hear habitually, as at Jamaica and St. Domingo, the sound of whips, and the outcries of the wretched beings, whose bodies are torn piece meal by their strokes.  It is because the people of Virginia are commonly milder than those of the Sugar Colonies, which consist chiefly of rapacious men, eager to amass fortunes, as soon as possible, and return to Europe.  The produce of their labours being also less valuable, their tasks are not so rigorously exacted, and in justice to both, it must be allowed that the Negroes themselves are less treacherous and thievish, than they are in the Islands:  for the propagation of the black species being very considerable here, most of them are born in the country, and it is remarked that these are in general less depraved than those imported from Africa.  Besides, we must do the Virginians the justice to remark, that many of them treat their Negroes with a great deal of humanity, and what is still more to their honor, they appear sorry there are any among them, and are forever talking of abolishing slavery, and falling upon some other mode of improving their land, &c.

’However this may be, it is fortunate that different motives concur to deter mankind from exercising such tyranny, at least upon their own species, if we cannot say, strictly speaking, their equals; for the more we observe the Negroes, the more we are convinced that the difference between us does not lie in the colour alone, &c.

’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.