merous train of useless
inhabitants--useless, I mean, to themselves, and effectually to us, by
encouraging sloth and voluptuousness among our young farmers and planters,
who might otherwise know how to take care of their money, as well as how to
dissipate it.--In all other respects, I conceive them to be as valuable as
we are--as capable of worthy purposes, and to possess the same dignity that
we do, in the estimation of providence; although the value of their work
apart, for which we are dependent on them, we generally consider them as
good for nothing, and accordingly, treat them with greatest neglect.

But be it remembered, that this cause is the cause of heaven; and that the
father of them as well as of us, will not fail, at a future settlement, to
adjust the account between us, with a dreadful attention to justice.

Othello
Baltimore, May 10, 1788.

--_American Museum_, IV, 412-415.

ESSAY ON NEGRO SLAVERY

_No. II_

Upon no better principle do we plunder the coasts of Africa, and bring away
its wretched inhabitants as slaves than that, by which the greater fish
swallows up the lesser. Superior power seems only to produce superior
brutality; and that weakness and imbecility, which ought to engage our
protection, and interest the feelings of social benevolence in behalf of
the defenceless, seems only to provoke us to acts of illiberal outrage and
unmanly violence.

The practice which has been followed by the English nation, since the
establishment of the slave trade--I mean that of stirring up the natives
of Africa, against each other, with a view of purchasing the prisoners
mutually taken in battle, must strike the humane mind with sentiments of
the deepest abhorrence, and confer on that people a reproach, as lasting
as time itself. It is surprising that the eastern world did not unite, to
discourage a custom so diabolical in its tendency, and to exterminate a
species of oppression which humbles the dignity of all mankind. But this
torpid inattention can only be accounted for, by adverting to the savage
disposition of the times, which countenanced cruelties unheard of at this
enlightened period. What rudeness of demeanor and brutality of manner,
which had been introduced into Europe, by those swarms of barbarians, that
overwhelmed it from the north, had hardly begun to dissipate before the
enlivening sun of civilization, when this infernal practice first sprang
up into existence. Before this distingui