ve to beg is a passage to England," replied the negro. "I go
to seek in your country that liberty which I can find nowhere else. For
years have I been striving to instil into my unhappy countrymen a
knowledge of their true position; but they are too ignorant, too
gross-minded to understand me. I have had no wish to set them against
their masters. In most instances, both parties have been born to the
position they occupy, and cannot help themselves. All I want is, that
the masters should do them justice, and should treat them as men--as
human beings with souls, with like passions, with like thoughts as
themselves--that they should do their best to improve their minds, to
educate them, to prepare them for that liberty they must sooner or later
obtain. The question is, how will it be obtained? By fair and gentle
means, granted--not taken by force as a right, or by violence and
bloodshed. I have tried all means. I have leagued with all classes of
men to commence, in some way or other, the work. Thus, for a time, I
associated with Captain Ralph; but he grossly deceived me, as he did
everybody else. I joined the Maroon bands, in the idea that force might
avail; but in that respect I found that I was totally wrong in my
calculations. I have tried to influence the planters, to show them
their true interests: that with a well-instructed peasantry they would
get far more work done, and at a smaller cost, than they do now with
their gangs of ignorant slaves; but they laugh my notions to scorn.
They fancy, because they find the negro ignorant, brutal, and stupid,
that he can never be anything else. They forget that they made him so
when they made him or his ancestors slaves; and that it must take more
than one generation of gentle, watchful, judicious education to raise
him out of the wretched state in which he now grovels. No
philanthropist would wish them to emancipate their slaves now without
long previous training, to fit them for liberty. If they ever free them
without that training, they will ruin their properties. I find fault
with them for not commencing that training at once, for not teaching
them the religion they themselves profess, for not in any way attempting
to enlighten their ignorance. Perhaps I may induce people in England to
advocate the negro's cause; but yet if Christian men here, on the scene
of their sufferings, do not care for them, how can I expect people at a
distance to listen to their crie