ar of, excepting perhaps
that the former do not usually fetch so good a price as the latter....

"I own, however, that I dislike slavery and among other reasons
because as it is here conducted it has pernicious effects on the
social state, by being unfavorable to education. It certainly is no
necessary circumstance, essential to the condition of a slave, that he
be uneducated; yet this is the general and almost universal lot of the
slaves. Such extreme, deliberate, and systematic inattention to all
mental improvement, in so large portion of our species, gives far too
much countenance and encouragement to those abject persons who are
contented to be rude and ignorant."--Jonathan Boucher's _A View of the
Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution_, pp. 183, 188,
189.

A PORTION OF AN ESSAY OF BISHOP PORTEUS TOWARD A PLAN FOR THE MORE
EFFECTUAL CIVILIZATION AND CONVERSION OF THE NEGRO SLAVES ON THE TRENT
ESTATE IN BARBADOES BELONGING TO THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF
THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS. (WRITTEN IN 1784)

"We are expressly commanded to preach the gospel to every creature;
and therefore every human creature must necessarily be capable of
receiving it. It may be true, perhaps, that the generality of
the Negro slaves are extremely dull of apprehension, and slow of
understanding; but it may be doubted whether they are more so than
some of the lowest classes of our own people; at least they are
certainly not inferior in capacity to the Greenlanders, many of whom
have made very sincere Christians. Several travellers of good credit
speak in very favorable terms, both of the understandings and
dispositions of the native Africans on the coast of Guinea; and it is
a well-known fact, that many even of the Negro slaves in our islands,
although laboring under disadvantages and discouragements, that might
well depress and stupefy even the best understandings, yet give
sufficient proofs of the great quickness of parts and facility in
learning. They have, in particular, a natural turn to the mechanical
arts, in which several of them show much ingenuity, and arrive at no
small degree of perfection. Some have discovered marks of genius for
music, poetry, and other liberal accomplishments; and there are not
wanting instances among them of a strength of understanding, and a
generosity, dignity, and heroism of mind, which would have done honour
to the most cultivated European. It is not, therefore, to any natural
or