ers from a distant country.]

[Footnote 095: Suppose, without the knowledge of any historian, they had
made such considerable conquests, as to have settled themselves at the
distance of 1000 miles in any one direction from _Colchis_, still they
must have changed their colour. For had they gone in an Eastern or
Western direction, they must have been of the same colour as the
_Circassians_; if to the north, whiter; if to the south, of a copper.
There are no people within that distance of _Colchis_, who are black.]

[Footnote 096: There are a particular people among those transported
from Africa to the colonies, who immediately on receiving punishment,
destroy themselves. This is a fact which the _receivers_ are unable to
contradict.]

* * * * *

CHAP. IX.

The reader may perhaps think, that the _receivers_ have by this
time expended all their arguments, but their store is not so easily
exhausted. They are well aware that justice, nature, and religion, will
continue, as they have ever uniformly done, to oppose their conduct.
This has driven them to exert their ingenuity, and has occasioned that
multiplicity of arguments to be found in the present question.

These arguments are of a different complexion from the former. They
consist in comparing the state of _slaves_ with that of some of the
classes of _free_ men, and in certain scenes of felicity, which the
former are said to enjoy.

It is affirmed that the punishments which the Africans undergo, are less
severe than the military; that their life is happier than that of the
English peasant; that they have the advantages of manumission; that they
have their little spots of ground, their holy-days, their dances; in
short, that their life is a scene of festivity and mirth, and that they
are much happier in the colonies than in their own country.

These representations, which have been made out with much ingenuity and
art, may have had their weight with the unwary; but they will never pass
with men of consideration and sense, who are accustomed to estimate the
probability of things, before they admit them to be true. Indeed the
bare assertion, that their situation is even comfortable, contains its
own refutation, or at least leads us to suspect that the person, who
asserted it, has omitted some important considerations in the account.
Such we shall shew to have been actually the case, and that the
representations of the _re