CIVILIZATION AND SLAVEBY. 283 



long established, the increase of civilization solely "has less 

 influence on the treatment of slaves than many are disposed 

 to admit. The civilization of a nation seldom extends to a 

 great number of individuals ; and does not reach those, who 

 in the plantations are in immediate contact with the blacks. 

 I have known very humane proprietors shrink from the diffi- 

 culties that arise in the great plantations ; they hesitate to 

 disturb established order, to make innovations, which, if not 

 simultaneous, not supported by the legislation, or (which 

 would be more powerful) by public feeling, would fail in 

 their end, and perhaps aggravate the wretchedness of those 

 whose sufferings they were meant to alleviate. These con- 

 siderations retard the good that might be effected by men 

 animated by the most benevolent intentions, and who deplore 

 the barbarous institutions which have devolved to them by 

 inheritance. They well know, that to produce an essential 

 change in the state of the slaves, to lead them progressively to 

 the enjoyment of liberty, requires a firm will on the part of the 

 local authorities, the concurrence of wealthy and enlightened 

 citizens, and a general plan in which all chances of disorder, 

 and means of repression, are wisely calculated. Without 

 this community of action and effort, slavery, with its 

 miseries and excesses, will survive as it did in ancient Rome,* 

 along with elegance of manners, progressive intelligence, and 

 all the charms of the civilization which its presence accuses, 

 and which it threatens to destroy, whenever the hour of 

 vengeance shall arrive. Civilization, or slow national demora- 

 lization, merely prepare the way for future events ; but to pro- 

 duce great changes in the social state, there must be a coinci- 

 dence of certain events, the period of the occurrence oi which 

 cannot be calculated. Such is the complication of human des- 

 tiny, that the same cruelties which tarnished the conquest of 

 America, have been re-enacted before our own eyes in times 

 which we suppose to be characterized by vast progress, infor- 



The argument deduced from the civilization of Rome and Greece, in 

 favour of slavery, is much in vogue in the West Indies, where sometimes 

 we find it adorned with all the graces of erudition. Thus, in speeches 

 delivered in 1795, in the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica, it was alleged, 

 that from the example of elephants having been employed in the wars of 

 Pyrrhus and Hannibal, it could not be blameable to have brought a hun- 

 dred dugs and forty hunters from the island of Cuba to hunt the maroon 

 negroes. Bryan Edwards, vol. i, p. 570. 



