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.”

Why this comparison, which seems to insinuate a justification of the Virginians? does a misfortune cease to be such, because there is a greater elsewhere?  Was Cartouche less detestable because Brinvilliers had existed before him?  Let us not weaken by comparisons the idea of criminality, nor lessen the attention due to the miserable, this were to countenance the crime.  The Negroes are ill lodged, ill cloathed, oppressed with labour in Virginia:  this is the fact, this is the offence.  It matters not whether they are worse treated elsewhere; in whatever degree they are so in Virginia, it is still outrage and injustice.

And again, why are the Negroes of Virginia less cruelly treated?  Humanity is not the motive, it is because covetousness cannot obtain so much from their labours, as in the Sugar Islands.  Was it otherwise, they would be sacrificed to it here, as well as there; how can we praise such forced humanity? how, on the contrary, not give vent to all the indignation, which must naturally arise in every feeling mind?

“And to do justice to both, you add, if the Virginians are not so severe, it is because the Negroes themselves are less treacherous and thievish than in the islands, because the propagation of the black species being very considerable here, most of the Negroes are born in the country, and it is remarked, that these are in general less depraved than those imported from Africa.”

Here is a strange confusion of causes and effects, and a strange abuse of words.  First let us clear up the facts.  Here are some valuable ones for the cause of the Negroes.

You say they are not so thievish in Virginia, propagate faster, and are less depraved:  Why?  Because they are less cruelly treated.—­Here is the cause and the effect, you have mistaken one for the other.

We must conclude from this fact, that if the Virginians were no longer severe, and should treat the blacks like fellow-creatures, they would not be more vicious than their white servants.