should represent them as a lawless, piratical set of unprincipled robbers, plunderers and villains, who basely prostituted the superior power and information, which God had given them for worthy purposes to the vilest of all ends.  We should not hesitate to say that they made use of those advantages only to infringe upon every dictate of justice; to trample under foot every suggestion of principle, and to spurn, with contempt, every right of humanity.

The Algerines are reprobated all the world over, for their unlawful depredations; and stigmatized as pirates, for their unreasonable exactions from foreign nations.  But, the Algerines are no greater pirates than the Americans; nor are they a race more destructive to the happiness to mankind.  The depredations of the latter on the coast of Africa, and upon the Indians’ Territory make the truth of this assertion manifest.  The piratical depredations of the Algerines appear to be a judgment from heaven upon the nations, to punish their perfidy and atrocious violations of justice; and never did any people more justly merit the scourge than Americans, on whom it seems to fall with peculiar and reiterated violence.  When they yoke our citizens to the plow, and compel them to labour in that degraded manner, they only retaliate on us for similar barbarities.  For Algiers is a part of the same country, whose helpless inhabitants we are accustomed to carry away.  But the English and Americans cautiously avoid engaging with a warlike people, whom they fear to attack in a manner so base and unworthy; whilst the Algerines, more generous and courageous plunderers, are not afraid to make war on brave and well-disciplined enemies, who are capable of making a gallant resistance.

Whoever examines into the conditions of the slaves in America will find them in a state of the most uncultivated rudeness.  Not instructed in any kind of learning, they are grossly ignorant of all refinement, and have little else about them, belonging to the nature of civilized man, than mere form.  They are strangers to almost every idea, that doth not relate to their labour or their food; and though naturally possessed of strong sagacity, and lively parts, are, in all respects, in a state of most deplorable brutality.—­This is owing to the iron-hand of oppression, which ever crushes the bud of genius and binds up in chains every expansion of the human mind.—­Such is their extreme ignorance that they are utterly unacquainted with the laws of the world—­the injunctions of religion—­their own natural rights, and the forms, ceremonies and privileges of marriage originally established by the Divinity.  Accordingly they lived in open violation of the precepts of christianity and with as little formality or restrictions as the brutes of the field, unite for the purposes of procreation.  Yet this is a civilized country and a most enlightened period of the world!  The resplendent glory of the gospel is at hand, to conduct us in safety through