nquered and trampled on by man, calmly said, "We lions have
no painters."

I shall be told that in the preceding examples I have shown only the
bright side of the picture. I readily grant it; but I have deemed it
important to show that the picture _has_ a bright side. I am well aware
that most of the negro authors are remarkable principally because they
are negroes. With considerable talent, they generally evince bad taste.
I do not pretend that they are Scotts or Miltons; but I wish to prove
that they are _men_, capable of producing their proportion of Scotts and
Miltons, if they could be allowed to live in a state of physical and
intellectual freedom. But where, at the present time, _can_ they live in
perfect freedom, cheered by the hopes and excited by the rewards, which
stimulate white men to exertion? Every avenue to distinction is closed
to them. Even where the body is suffered to be free, a hateful prejudice
keeps the soul in fetters. I think every candid mind must admit that it
is more wonderful they have done so much, than that they have done no
more.

As a class, I am aware that the negroes, with many honorable exceptions,
are ignorant, and show little disposition to be otherwise; but this
ceases to be the case just in proportion as they are free. The fault is
in their unnatural situation, not in themselves. Tyranny always dwarfs
the intellect. Homer tells us, that when Jupiter condemns a man to
slavery, he takes from him half his mind. A family of children treated
with habitual violence or contempt, become stupid and sluggish, and are
called fools by the very parents or guardians who have crushed their
mental energies. It was remarked by M. Dupuis, the British Consul at
Mogadore, that the generality of Europeans, after a long captivity and
severe treatment among the Arabs, seemed at first exceedingly dull and
insensible. "If they had been any considerable time in slavery," says
he, "they appeared lost to reason and feeling; their spirits broken;
and their faculties sunk in a species of stupor, which I am unable
adequately to describe. They appeared degraded even below the negro
slave. The succession of hardships, without any protecting law to which
they can appeal for alleviation, or redress, seems to destroy every
spring of exertion, or hope in their minds. They appear indifferent to
every thing around them; abject, servile, and brutish."

Lieutenant Hall, in his Travels in the United States, makes the
fo