BUFFON.

Upon the whole, it is apparent that the unfortunate negroes are endowed with excellent hearts, and possess the seeds of every human virtue. I cannot write their history, without lamenting their miserable condition. Is it not more than enough to reduce men to slavery, and to oblige them to labor perpetually, without the capacity of acquiring property? To these, is it necessary to add cruelty, and blows, and to abuse them worse than brutes? Humanity revolts against those odious oppressions which result from avarice, and which would have been daily renewed, had not the laws given a friendly check to the brutality of masters, and fixed limits to the sufferings of their slaves. They are forced to labor; and yet the coarsest food is dealt out to them with a sparing hand. They support," say their obdurate taskmasters, " hunger without inconvenience; a single European meal is sufficient provision to a negro for three days; however little they eat or sleep they are always equally strong and equally fit for labor." How can men, in whose breasts a single spark of humanity remains unextinguished, adopt such detestable maxims? How dare they by such barbarous and diabolical arguments, attempt to paliate those oppressions which originate solely from their thirst of gold? But let us abandon those hardened monsters to perpetual infamy, and return to our subject.-Natural His. tory.

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H. GREGOIRE.

Philanthropists! no individual can, with impunity, be just and benevolent. At the birth of time, war commenced between virtue and vice, and will not cease but with them. Devoured with the desire to do injury, the wicked are always armed against him who dares to reveal their crimes, and prevent them from tormenting the human race. Against their guilty attempts let us oppose a wall of brass, but let us avenge ourselves by benefits. Let us be active. Life which is so long for the commission of evil actions, is short for the performance of virtue. The earth steals from under our steps, and we go to quit this terrestrial scene. The corruption of our times carries towards posterity all the elements of slavery and crime. Nevertheless, when we repose in the tomb, some honest men, escaping the contagion, will become the representatives of Providence. Let us leave to them the honorable task of defending liberty and misfortune; from the bosom of eternity we applaud their efforts, and they shall doubtless be blest by the common Father of all, who in men, whatever be their color, acknowledges his work, and loves them as his children.

There is nothing useful but what is just; there is no law of nature which makes one individual dependent on another; and all these laws, which reason disavows, have no force. Every person brings

with him into the world his title to freedom. Social conventions have circumscribed its use, but its limits ought to be the same for all the members of a community, whatever be their origin, color, or religion. If, says Price, you have a right to make another man a slave, he has a right to make you a slave; and if we have no right, says Ramsay, to sell him, no one has a right to purchase him.

May European nations, at least, expiate their crimes towards Africans. May Africans, raising their humiliated fronts, give spring to all their faculties, and rival the whites in talents and virtues only; avenging themselves by benefits and effusions of fraternal kindness, at last enjoy liberty and happiness.

If ever negroes, bursting their chains, should-come (which Heaven forbid) on the European coast, to drag whites of both sexes from their families; to chain them and conduct them to Africa, and mark them with a hot iron; if whites stolen, sold, purchased by crimes, and placed under the guidance of merciless inspectors, were immediately compelled, by the stroke of the whip, to work in a climate injurious to their health, where, at the close of each day, they could have no other consolation than that of advancing another step to the tomb-no other perspective than to suffer and to die in all the anguish of despair-if devoted to misery and ignominy, they were excluded from all the privileges of society, and declared legally incapable of judicial action, their testimony would not have been admitted even against the black class; if driven from the sidewalks, they were compelled to mingle with the animals in the middle of the street-if a subscription were made to have them lashed in a mass, and their backs, to prevent gangrene, covered with pepper and with salt—if the forfeit for killing them were but a trifling sum-if a reward were offered for apprehending those who escape from slavery-if those who escape were hunted by a pack of hounds, trained to carnageif, blaspheming the Divinity, the blacks pretended, that by their origin they had permission of Heaven to preach passive obedience and resignation to the whites-if greedy hireling writers published, that for this reason, just reprisals may be exercised against the rebellious whites, and that white slaves are happy, more happy than the peasants in the bosom of Africa ;-in a word, if all the arts of cunning and calumny, all the strength and fury of avarice, all the inventions of ferocity were directed against you, by a coalition of dogs, merchants, priests, kings, soldiers, and colonists, what cry of horror would resound through these countries? To express it, new epithets would be sought; a crowd of writers, and particularly of poets, would exhaust their eloquent lamentations, provided that having nothing to fear, there was something to gain. Europeans, reverse this hypothesis, and see what you are!

Yes, I repeat it, there is not a vice, not a species of wickedness, of which Europe is not guilty towards negroes, of which she has not shown them the example. Avenging God! suspend thy thunder, exhaust thy compassion, in giving her time and courage to repair, if possible, these horrors and atrocities.-Faculties of Negroes.

THE ABBE RAYNAL-JAQUES PIERRE BRISSOT.

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THE ABBE RAYNAL.

Will it be said that he, who wants to make me a slave, does me no injury, but that he only makes use of his rights? Where are those rights? Who hath stamped upon them so sacred a character as to silence mine?

He, who supports the system of slavery, is the enemy of the whole human race. He divides it into two societies of legal assassins; the oppressors, and the oppressed. It is the same thing as proclaiming to the world, if you would preserve your life, instantly take away mine, for I want to have yours.

But the negroes, they say, are a race born for slavery; their dispositions are narrow, treacherous, and wicked; they themselves allow the superiority of our understandings, and almost acknowledge the justice of our authority. Yes; the minds of the negroes are contracted, because slavery destroys all the springs of the soul. They are wicked, but not equally so with you. They are treacherous, because they are under no obligation to speak truth to their tyrants. They acknowledge the superiority of our understandings, because we have abused their ignorance. They allow the justice of our authority, because we have abused their weakness.

I shall not be afraid to cite to the tribunal of reason and justice those governments, which tolerate this cruelty, or which even are not ashamed to make it the basis of their power..

JAQUES PIERRE BRISSOT.

Why is it declared that a slave cannot be a witness against a free man. You either suppose him less true than the free man, or you suppose him differently organised. The last supposition is absurd; the other, if true, is against yourselves; for, why are they less conscientious, more corrupted and more wicked?—It is because they are slaves. The crime falls on the head of the master; and the slave is thus degraded and punished for the vice of the master.

Why do you ordain that the master should be reimbursed from the public treasury, the price of the slave who may suffer death for crimes? If, as is easy to prove, the crimes of slaves are almost universally the fruit of their slavery, and are in proportion to the severity of their treatment, is it not absurd to recompense the master for his tyranny? When we recollect that these masters have hitherto been accustomed to consider their slaves as a species of cattle, and that the laws make the master responsible for the damages done by his cattle, does it not appear contradictory to reverse the law relative to these black cattle, when they do a mischief, for which society thinks it necessary to extirpate them? In this case, the real author of the crime, instead of paying damages, receives a reward.

The little state of Delaware has followed the example of Pennsylvania. It is mostly peopled by Quakers; instances of giving freedom are therefore numerous. In this state, famous for the wisdom of its laws, for its good faith and federal patriotism, resides that angel of peace, WARNER MIFFLIN. Like Benezet, he occupies his time in extending the opinions of his society relative to the freedom of the blacks, and the care of providing for their existence and their instruction. It is in part to his zeal that is owing the formation of a society in that state, after the model of the one at Philadelphia, for the abolition of slavery.

With the state of Delaware finishes the system of protection to the blacks. Yet there are some negroes freed in Maryland, because there are some Quakers there; and you perceive it very readily, on comparing the fields of tobacco or of Indian corn, belonging to these people, with those of others; you see how much superior the hand of a freeman is to that of a slave, in the operations of industry.

When you run over Maryland and Virginia, you conceive yourself in a different world; and you are convinced of it, when you converse with the inhabitants.

They speak not here of projects for freeing the negroes; they praise not the societies of London and America; they read not the works of Clarkson-No; the indolent masters behold with uneasiness the efforts that are making to render freedom universal.

The strongest objection lies in the character, the manners, and habits of the Virginians. They seem to enjoy the sweat of slaves. They are fond of hunting; they love the display of luxury, and disdain the idea of labor. This order of things will change when slavery shall be no more. It is not, that the work of a slave is more profitable than that of a freeman; but it is in multiplying the slaves, condemning them to a miserable nourishment, in depriving them of clothes, and in running over a large quantity of land with a negligent culture, that they supply the deficiency of honest industry.

In the South, the blacks are in a state of abjection difficult to describe; many of them are naked, ill fed, lodged in miserable huts, on straw. They receive no education, no instruction in any kind of religion; they are not married, but coupled; thus they are brutalized. Every thing in Maryland and Virginia wears the print of slavery; a starved soil, bad cultivation, houses falling to ruin, cattle small and few, and black walking skeletons; in a word, you see real misery, and apparent luxury, insulting each other.

"God has created men of all nations, of all languages, of all colors, equally free; Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of the Divine laws; and a degradation of human nature.”

[Travels in the United States, 1788.]

JONATHAN SWIFT.

ABI VIATOR,

ET IMITARE, SI POTERIS,

STRENUUM PRO VIRILI LIBERTATIS VINDICEM.

(GO TRAVELLER,

AND IMITATE, IF YOU CAN,

A STRENUOUS ADVOCATE OF HUMAN LIBERTY.)

From the Epitaph of Dean Swift, Written by himself, and engraved on his monument in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

LAURENCE STERNE.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.-'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, LIBERTY! whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till NATURE herself shall change-no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron-with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled.-Gracious heaven! grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion.

"A negro has a soul, an' please your honor," said the Corporal, (doubtingly.)

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"I am not much versed, Corporal," quoth my Uncle Toby, "In. things of that kind; but I suppose God would not leave him without one any more than thee or me."

"It would be putting one sadly over the head of the other," quoth the Corporal.

"It would so," said my Uncle Toby.

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Why then, an' please your honor, is a black man to be used worse than a white one?"

"I can give no reason," said my Uncle Toby.

"Only," cried the Corporal, shaking his head, "because he has no one to stand up for him."

"It is that very thing, Trim," quoth my Uncle Toby, "which recommends him to protection."-Tristam Shandy.