BOOK III. CHAP. V. 497 



rity. The Africans, firfl: imported, were wild and favage to an ex- 

 treme: their intractable and ferocious tempers naturally provoked 

 their maflers to rule tliem with a rod of iron ; and the earliefl: 

 laws cnafted to afFeil them are therefore rigid and inclement, even 

 to a degree of inhumanity. By what means it happened, that, 

 from the firft colonization in the Weft-Indies, this race of men 

 were fo degraded as we find them, is not entirely clear. The 

 Englidi, probably, did no more than follow the fteps of the Portu- 

 gueze and other nations, who had begun, long before, to trade in 

 Negroes as a commodity, and to hold them as mere chattels and 

 moveables. Perhaps the depravity of their nature, much more 

 than their colour, gave rife to a belief of their inferiority of in- 

 telledl ; and it became an eftablilhed principle to treat thofe as 

 brute beafts, who had fo little preteufions to claim kindred with 

 the human race, except in the Hiape of their bodie?, and their 

 walking upon two legs inftead of four. However it might be, 

 certain it is, that the planters of that age thought it no greater 

 crime to kill a Negroe, than to knock a monkey on the head. 



So foon as the African trade became a national concern, from its 

 importance, the parliament of Britain fell in with the general idea, 

 and confidered Negroes, purchafed from that continent, as a lawful 

 commercial property ; and this in fo ftrong a fenfe, that the greateft 

 oppreffion, under which our Negroes in the iflands at prefent la- 

 bour, arifes materially from the ordinance of that ftatute [a], which 

 declares them to be as houfes, lands, hereditaments, aflets, and 

 perfonal eftate, transferrable, and amenable to payment of debts 

 due to the king or his fubjefts. Since the major part of thefe Ne- 

 groes, efpecially in the older colonies, by having been born and 

 trained up in them, have appeared more humanized than their an- 

 ceflors, the laws in thefe places have worn a milder afpe£t : yet, 

 as thoufands are every year introduced from Guiney, who differ 

 not at all from the earlieft imported in barbarity of manners ; fo 

 the feverity of the firft inftitutions has ftill been retained in feverai 

 refpe£ls, which chiefly affed the Blacks of this clafs, although all 

 are equally bound by them without exception. This obfervatioii 

 leads me to enquire, whether fome diftindlion might not be taken, 



["] 5Geo. 11.0,7. ancl likewife 13 Geo. HI. c. 14. 



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