hen 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. For what is it that
awakens the abilities of men, and distinguishes them from the common
herd? Is it not often the amiable hope of becoming serviceable to
individuals, or the state? Is it not often the hope of riches, or of
power? Is it not frequently the hope of temporary honours, or a lasting
fame? These principles have all a wonderful effect upon the mind. They
call upon it to exert its faculties, and bring those talents to the
publick view, which had otherwise been concealed. But the unfortunate
Africans have no such incitements as these, that they should shew their
genius. They have no hope of riches, power, honours, fame. They have no
hope but this, that their miseries will be soon terminated by death.

And here we cannot but censure and expose the murmurings of the
unthinking and the gay; who, going on in a continual round of pleasure
and prosperity, repine at the will of Providence, as exhibited in the
shortness of human duration. But let a weak and infirm old age overtake
them: let them experience calamities: let them feel but half the
miseries which the wretched Africans undergo, and they will praise the
goodness of Providence, who hath made them mortal; who hath prescribed
certain ordinary bounds to the life of man; and who, by such a
limitation, hath given all men this comfortable hope, that however
persecuted in life, a time will come, in the common course of nature,
when their sufferings will have an end.

Such then is the nature of this servitude, that we can hardly expect to
find in those, who undergo it, even the glimpse of genius. For if their
minds are in a continual state of depression, and if they have no
expectat