emarks: "Like Adam, we are all apt to shift off the blame from
ourselves and lay it upon others; how justly, in our case, you may
judge. The negroes are enslaved by the negroes themselves before they
are purchased by the masters of the ships who bring them here. It is, to
be sure, at our choice whether we buy them or not; so this, then, is our
crime, folly, or whatever you will please to call it. But our assembly,
foreseeing the ill consequences of importing such numbers among us, hath
often attempted to lay a duty upon them which would amount to a
prohibition, such as ten or twenty pounds a head; but no governor dare
pass such a law, having instructions to the contrary from the board of
trade at home. By this means they are forced upon us whether we will or
will not. This plainly shows the African Company hath the advantage of
the colonies, and may do as it pleases with the ministry." "To live in
Virginia without slaves is morally impossible," and it was a hard task
for the planter to perform his duty toward them; for, on the one hand,
if they were not compelled to work hard, he would endanger his temporal
ruin; on the other hand, was the danger of not being able, in a better
world, to render a good account of his humane stewardship of
them.[495:A]

A long interval of tranquillity had enervated the planters of Virginia:
luxury had introduced effeminate manners and dissolute habits. "To eat
and drink delicately and freely; to feast, and dance, and riot; to
pamper cocks and horses; to observe the anxious, important, interesting
event, which of two horses can run fastest, or which of two cocks can
flutter and spur most dexterously; these are the grand affairs that
almost engross the attention of some of our great men. And little
low-lived sinners imitate them to the utmost of their power. The
low-born sinner can leave a needy family to starve at home, and add one
to the rabble at a horse-race or a cock-fight. He can get drunk and turn
himself into a beast with the lowest as well as his betters with more
delicate liquors." Burk, the historian of Virginia, who was by no means
a rigid censor, noticing the manners of the Virginians during the half
century preceding the Revolution, says: "The character of the people for
hospitality and expense was now decided, and the wealth of the land
proprietors, particularly on the banks of the rivers, enabled them to
indulge their passions even to profusion and excess. Drinking parties
we