I do not, however, pretend to say, that the Negroes of Africa are all good, or even that many of them are not depraved.  But is this fact to be imputed to them as a personal crime?  Ought you not rather to have ascribed it to the foreign source by which they are corrupted.  Alike in them and in the whites, the depravity of man is a consequence of his wretchedness, and the usurpation of his rights.  Wherever he is free and at ease, he is good; wherever the contrary, he is wicked.  Neither his nature nor the climate corrupt him, but the government of his country.  Now that of the Negroes is almost universally despotic, such as must necessarily debase and corrupt the Negro.

How much is the depravity, occasioned by the government of his country, increased by his second slavery, far worse than the first—­for he is no longer among friends in his native land—­surrounded by the pleasing scenes of his childhood, he is among monsters who are going to live by, and trade in his blood, and has nothing before his eyes but death, or oppression equivalent to an endless punishment.

How is it possible such horrid prospects should not fire his soul?  How, if chance should present him with arms and liberty, should he resist using them, to put an end to his own existence, or that of his tormentors?  What white man would be less cruel in his situation?  Truly I think myself of a humane disposition, that I love my fellow-creatures and detest the effusion of blood, but if ever a villain, white or black, should snatch me from my freedom, my family, and my friends, should overwhelm me with outrages and blows, to gratify his caprice, should extend his barbarities to my wife and children—­my blood boils at the thought—­perhaps in a transport of revenge....  If such vengeance would be lawful in me, what makes the Negro more guilty?  Why should that be called wickedness and depravity in him, which would be stiled virtue in me, in you, in every white man?  Are not my rights the same as his?  Is not nature our common parent?  God his father as well as mine?  His conscience an infallible guide as well as mine?  Let us then no longer make other laws for the blacks than those we are bound by ourselves, since Heaven has placed them on a level with us, has made them like us, since they are our brethren and our fellow-creatures.

Here you stop me, you say that the Negro is not our fellow-creature, that he is below the white.

How could so shocking an opinion escape the pen of a member of the Royal Academy, a writer who would be thought a friend of mankind!

Do not you see the tormentors of St. Domingo, avail themselves of it already, redoubling their strokes, and regarding their slaves as mere machines, like the Cartesians do the brutes?  They are not our fellow-creatures will they say:  a philosopher of Paris has proved it?