derations sur la Colonie de St. Dominique_,(See
errata--should be read as "_St. Domingue_") published by authority
in 1777.]

[Footnote 108: Ten thousand people under fair advantages, and in a soil
congenial to their constitutions, and where the means of subsistence are
easy, should produce in a century 160,000. This is the proportion in
which the Americans increased; and the Africans in their own country
increase in the same, if not in a greater proportion. Now as the climate
of the colonies is as favourable to their health as that of their own
country, the causes of the prodigious decrease in the one, and increase
in the other, will be more conspicuous.]

* * * * *

CHAP. X.

We have now taken a survey of the treatment which the unfortunate
_Africans_ undergo, when they are put into the hands of the
_receivers_. This treatment, by the four first chapters of the
present part of this Essay, appears to be wholly insupportable, and to
be such as no human being can apply to another, without the imputation
of such crimes, as should make him tremble. But as many arguments are
usually advanced by those who have any interest in the practice, by
which they would either exculpate the treatment, or diminish its
severity, we allotted the remaining chapters for their discussion. In
these we considered the probability of such a treatment against the
motives of interest; the credit that was to be given to those
disinterested writers on the subject, who have recorded particular
instances of barbarity; the inferiority of the _Africans_ to the
human species; the comparisons that are generally made with respect to
their situation; the positive scenes of felicity which they are said to
enjoy, and every other argument, in short, that we have found to have
ever been advanced in the defence of slavery. These have been all
considered, and we may venture to pronounce, that, instead of answering
the purpose for which they were intended, they serve only to bring such
circumstances to light, as clearly shew, that if ingenuity were racked
to invent a situation, that would be the most distressing and
insupportable to the human race; it could never invent one, that would
suit the description better, than the--_colonial slavery_.

If this then be the case, and if slaves, notwithstanding all the
arguments to the contrary, are exquisitely miserable, we ask you
_receivers, by what right_ you reduce them t