ll have more weight than all the arguments which have hitherto been
advanced. It is an opinion, which the _Africans_ universally
entertain, that, as soon as death shall release them from the hands of
their oppressors, they shall immediately be wafted back to their native
plains, there to exist again, to enjoy the sight of their beloved
countrymen, and to spend the whole of their new existence in scenes of
tranquillity and delight; and so powerfully does this notion operate
upon them, as to drive them frequently to the horrid extremity of
putting a period to their lives. Now if these suicides are frequent,
(which no person can deny) what are they but a proof, that the situation
of those who destroy themselves must have been insupportably wretched:
and if the thought of returning to their country after death, _when
they have experienced the colonial joys_, constitutes their supreme
felicity, what are they but a proof, that they think there is as much
difference between the two situations, as there is between misery and
delight?

Nor is the assertion of the _receivers_ less liable to a refutation
in the instance of those, who terminate their own existence, than of
those, whom nature releases from their persecutions. They die with a
smile upon their face, and their funerals are attended by a vast
concourse of their countrymen, with every possible demonstration of
joy[106]. But why this unusual mirth, if their departed brother has left
an happy place? Or if he has been taken from the care of an indulgent
master, who consulted his pleasures, and administered to his wants? But
alas, it arises from hence, that _he is gone to his happy country_:
a circumstance, sufficient of itself, to silence a myriad of those
specious arguments, which the imagination has been racked, and will
always be racked to produce, in favour of a system of tyranny and
oppression.

It remains only, that we should now conclude the chapter with a fact,
which will shew that the account, which we have given of the situation
of slaves, is strictly true, and will refute at the same time all the
arguments which have hitherto been, and may yet be brought by the
_receivers_, to prove that their treatment is humane. In one of the
western colonies of the Europeans, [107]six hundred and fifty thousand
slaves were imported within an hundred years; at the expiration of which
time, their whole posterity were found to amount to one hundred and
forty thousand. This fact