sity; but if he hath been reduced to slavery, it is plain that no
such necessity existed, since he was not slain. It is not true that a
free man can sell himself, for sale supposes a price; but a slave and
his property becomes immediately that of his master; the slave can
therefore receive no price, nor the master pay, &c. And if a man cannot
sell himself, nor a prisoner of war be reduced to slavery, much less can
his child." Such are the sentiments of this illustrious civilian; his
reasonings, which I have been obliged to contract, the reader interested
in this subject will do well to consult at large.

Yet even these rights of imposing slavery, questionable, nay, refutable
as they are, we have not to authorise the bondage of the _Africans_. For
neither do they consent to be our slaves, nor do we purchase them of
their conquerors. The _British_ merchants obtain them from _Africa_ by
violence, artifice, and treachery, with a few trinkets to prompt those
unfortunate people to enslave one another by force or stratagem.
Purchase them indeed they may, under the authority of an act of the
British parliament. An act entailing upon the _Africans_, with whom we
are not at war, and over whom a British parliament could not of right
assume even a shadow of authority, the dreadful curse of perpetual
slavery, upon them and their children for ever. _There cannot be in
nature, there is not in all history, an instance in which every right of
men is more flagrantly violated._ The laws of the antients never
authorised the making slaves, but of those nations whom they had
conquered; yet they were heathens, and we are christians. They were
misled by a monstrous religion, divested of humanity, by a horrible and
barbarous worship; we are directed by the unerring precepts of the
revealed religion we possess, enlightened by its wisdom, and humanized
by its benevolence; before them, were gods deformed with passions, and
horrible for every cruelty and vice; before us, is that incomparable
pattern of meekness, charity, love and justice to mankind, which so
transcendently distinguished the Founder of christianity, and his ever
amiable doctrines.

Reader, remember that the corner stone of your religion, is to do unto
others as you would they should do unto you; ask then your own heart,
whether it would not abhor any one, as the most outrageous violater of
that and every other principle of right, justice, and humanity, who
should make a slave of yo