But do you allude to that execrable code, that _authorises murder_?
that tempts an unoffended person to kill the slave, that abhors and flies your service?
that delegates a power, which no host of men, which not all the world, can possess ?-- Or,--What do you say to that daily unmerited severity, which you consider only as common discipline?
Here you say that the Africans are vicious, that they are all of them ill-disposed, that you must of necessity be severe.

But can they be well-disposed to their oppressors?
In their own country they were just, generous, hospitable: qualities, which all the African historians allow them eminently to possess.

If then they are vicious, they must have contracted many of their vices from yourselves; and as to their own native vices, if any have been imported with them, are they not amiable, when compared with yours?
Thus then do the excuses, which have been hitherto made by the _receivers_, force a relation of such circumstances, as makes their conduct totally inexcusable, and, instead of diminishing at all, highly aggravates their guilt.
* * * * * CHAP.

VII.
We come now to that other system of reasoning, which is always applied, when the former is confuted; "that the Africans are an inferiour link of the chain of nature, and are made for slavery." This assertion is proved by two arguments; the first of which was advanced also by the ancients, and is drawn from the _inferiority of their capacities_.
Let us allow then for a moment, that they appear to have no parts, that they appear to be void of understanding.

And is this wonderful, when, you _receivers_ depress their senses by hunger?
Is this wonderful, when by incessant labour, the continual application of the lash, and the most inhuman treatment that imagination can devise, you overwhelm their genius, and hinder it from breaking forth ?--No,--You confound their abilities by the severity of their servitude: for as a spark of fire, if crushed by too great a weight of incumbent fuel, cannot be blown into a flame, but suddenly expires, so the human mind, if depressed by rigorous servitude, cannot be excited to a display of those faculties, which might otherwise have shone with the brightest lustre.
Neither is it wonderful in another point of view.