iety of men must
have had a _natural right_ to their dominion: but this is equally
false. No such signs of _inferiority_ are to be found in the one,
and the right to dominion in the other is _incidental_: for in what
volume of nature or religion is it written, that one society of men
should _breed slaves_ for the benefit, of another? Nor is it less
evident that they would have wanted many of those qualities which they
have, and which brutes have not: they would have wanted that _spirit
of liberty_, that _sense of ignominy and shame_[096], which so
frequently drives them to the horrid extremity of finishing their own
existence. Nor would they have been endowed with a _contemplative
power_; for such a power would have been unnecessary to people in
such a situation; or rather, its only use could have been to increase
their pain. We cannot suppose therefore that God has made an order of
beings, with such mental qualities and powers, for the sole purpose of
being used as _beasts_, or _instruments_ of labour. And here,
what a dreadful argument presents itself against you _receivers_?
For if they have no understandings as you confess, then is your conduct
impious, because, as they cannot perceive the intention of your
punishment, your severities cannot make them better. But if, on the
other hand, they have had understandings, (which has evidently appeared)
then is your conduct equally impious, who, by destroying their faculties
by the severity of your discipline, have reduced men; who had once the
power of reason, to an equality with the brute creation.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 073: Genesis, ch. iv. 15.]

[Footnote 074: Genesis, ch. ix. 25, 26, 27.]

[Footnote 075: Jeremiah says, ch. xiii. 23, "Can the AEthiopian change
his colour, or the leopard his spots?" Now the word, which is here
translated _AEthiopian_, is in the original Hebrew "_the descendant of
Cush_," which shews that this colour was not confined to the descendants
of _Canaan_, as the advocates for slavery assert.]

[Footnote 076: It is very extraordinary that the advocates for slavery
should consider those Africans, whom they call negroes, as the
descendants of _Canaan_, when few historical facts can be so well
ascertained, as that out of the descendants of the four sons of Ham, the
descendants of Canaan were the only people, (if we except the
Carthaginians, who were a colony of Canaan, and were afterwa