526 
whip: while no white man can name a bro- 
ther in chains. They are, moreover, from 
the state of morals among the whites (the 
immediate effect of the slave system), almost 
universally the fruits of illicit and vulgar 
amours; they owe nothing to their muiher 
but life; and are, in their turn, sacrificed 
to the brutal passions of the common ty- 
rants. It is evident that these circumstances 
which distinguish the mixed race in the 
colonial society, are altogether the conse- 
quences of the slaye system, and of the state 
of manners which that sytem has produced. 
in present, therefore, no formidable ob- 
stacle to the legislater who would, by gra- 
dual and prudent measures, reform the cor- 
rupted mass, and lay the foundations of a 
more natural arrangement in the social 
union, by cautiously but firmly applying the 
axe to the root of the evil, and undermining 
the institutions that have grown up in de- 
fiance of all justice and policy. 
«© The same remarks apply with equal pre- 
cision to the free negroes, who indeed re- 
semble the mulattoes in their moral and po- 
litical circumstances. And as the state of 
society among the whites themselves is evi- 
dently aflected in the most material degree 
by the same system of institutions which so 
peculiarly distinguishes the tropical colonies 
of America, we may with confidence con- 
clude, that the whole fabric of colonial 
society has naturally arisen out of the cir- 
cumstances in which legislative enactments 
originally placed those provinces; that it 
ptesents no insuperable difficulties to* the 
wisdom of enlightened reformers ; that it 
may receive complete and radical ameliora- 
tion from the gradual abolition of the nox- 
ious and artificial establishments which have 
been formed by the measures of former 
statesmen. 
«* In the fourth place, there can be no 
doubt that the climate of the West Indies 
renders the labour of negroes essential to the 
cultivation of the soil. It is only in their 
corporeal qualities that those men are fun- 
damentally distinguished from the rest of 
the human species. They excel all the other 
races of mankind in hardiness, agility, and 
strength of limbs; in the capacit of sus- 
taining the most galling fatigue and pain; in 
the faculty of enduring labour under every 
sort of privation, and all kinds of annoy- 
ance ; above all, in that quality which chiefly 
distinguishes the human body from the bo- 
dies of the lower animals, the power of sub- 
mitting with ease to every change of season, 
and adapting the corporeal habitudes and 
fanctions,. with safety and alacrity, to all 
the varieties of climate. From the first dis- 
covery of America to the present time, the 
expertence of every day in those sultry though 
splendid regions, has proved, that neither 
kuropeans nor their deseendants are, capable 
of enduring fatigue in the burning climates 
of the southern colonies. To the negro, all 
climates and soils are the same. He thrives 
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND STATISTICS. 
as well iv those marshes whence the heat of 
the vertical sun exhales every noxious va- 
pour, and engenders all the multifarious 
forms of animal and vegetable poison, as in 
the happiest vallies of the old world, where 
the breeze, the shade, and the stream, temper. 
the genial warmth of the most serene and 
fragrant air, As Jong, therefore, as the co- 
lonies are cultivated, the ‘population must 
consist of a mixed and variegated tribe. The 
great object of the legislator is the improve- 
ment of that state of society; and that sys- 
tem of manners, which have arisen from the 
necessary introduction of distinct races of 
inen, differing from each other ip civiliza- 
tion, in bodily qualities, and in political 
privileges. The only plan which ean be ad- 
mitted into our thoughts must proceed upon 
the principle of new-modelling the present 
structure of society, and retaining at the 
same time all the parts of which it is come 
posed,” 
To this melancholy inference all the 
preliminary observations of-this fluent 
writer have not disposed us entirely ta 
accede. Legislative enactments may 
very speedily change the state of society 
in the wholly cultivated islands. In 
these, a heavy and fast increasing duty 
on the further importation of negroes 
might render the domestic rearing of 
labourers cheaper than the importation 
of them. A disposition to use kindly, 
and to emancipate frequently, the ver- 
nacular slave, would soon succeed to the 
present insolent contempt for the black 
cattle of Africa. The use of distilled 
liquors, such as rum, might be more 
freely tolerated : drunkenness is the first 
luxury of the savage, the primary mo- 
tive of his voluntary industry, the ear- 
liest temptation to exchange labour for 
recompense by compact. The use of 
strong drugs, however unwholesome to 
the refined and delicate constitutions of | 
the civilized, appears, in the ruder 
stages af society, to be necessary to the 
very evolution of the faculties. If an 
habitual want of rum, of tobacco, or of 
other similar objects of conshmmption, 
can once be superinduced generally on 
the negroes, every thing necessary to. 
fit them for free labaurers is accom: 
plished. Their isidolence can then be 
overcome by other motives than pain 
and fear. Proprietors might favour the 
acquisition of wants by yes slaves, as 
well Ay providing shops of supply, as 
by allowing recompenses, or partial 
wages, to such as work over-hours. 
The suppression of importation, or the 
abolition of the slave-trade, in the fully 
settled islands, would almost immedi: 
