t.

It is affirmed again, that their manner of life, and their situation is
such in their own country, that to say they are happy is a jest. "But
who are you, who pretend to judge[103] of another man's happiness? That
state which each man, under the guidance of his maker, forms for
himself, and not one man for another? To know what constitutes mine or
your happiness, is the sole prerogative of him who created us, and cast
us in so various and different moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to
you of their unhappiness, amidst their native woods and desarts? Or,
rather, let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition
under you their lordly masters? Where they see, indeed, the
accommodations of civil life, but see them all pass to others,
themselves unbenefited by them. Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants
over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is
which makes their own happiness, and then see whether they do not place
it _in the return to their own country_, rather than in the
contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a
part."

But since you speak with so much confidence on the subject, let us ask
you _receivers_ again, if you have ever been informed by your
unfortunate slaves, that they had no connexions in the country from
which they have forcibly been torn away: or, if you will take upon you
to assert, that they never sigh, when they are alone; or that they never
relate to each other their tales of misery and woe. But you judge of
them, perhaps, in an happy moment, when you are dealing out to them
their provisions for the week; and are but little aware, that, though
the countenance may be cheered with a momentary smile, the heart may be
exquisitely tortured. Were you to shew us, indeed, that there are laws,
subject to no evasion, by which you are obliged to clothe and feed them
in a comfortable manner; were you to shew us that they are
protected[104] at all; or that even _one_ in a _thousand_ of
those masters have suffered death[105], who have been guilty of
_premeditated_ murder to their slaves, you would have a better
claim to our belief: but you can neither produce the instances nor the
laws. The people, of whom you speak, are _slaves_, are your own
_property_, are wholly _at your own disposal_; and this idea
is sufficient to overturn your assertions of their happiness.

But we shall now mention a circumstance, which, in the present case,
wi