150 



^Emisu, ger t* aretes apoainutai eiiruopa Zeus 

 Haneros, eut^ an min kuta doulion ema elesin. 



Odd. 17, 323. 



Jove fix'd it certain, tliat whatever day 

 Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away. 



But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. 

 Notwithstanding these considerations which must weak- 

 en their respect for tho laws of property, we find among 

 them nnmeroMS instances of the ?n(>st rigid integrity, 

 and as many as among their hetter instructed masters, 

 of benevolence, gratitude and unshaken fiilelity. The 

 opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason 

 and imagination, nmst be hazarded with great diffi- 

 dence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many 

 observations, even where the subject may be sul)mitted 

 to the anatomical knife, to opiical classes, to analysis by 

 fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is 

 a faculty, not a substance, we are examining ; where it 

 eludes the research of all the senses; where the condi- 

 tions of its existence are various and variously combin- 

 er] ; where the effects of those which are present or ab- 

 sent bid defiance to calculation ; let me add too, as a 

 circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion 

 would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in 

 the scale of beings which their Creator may perhajjs 

 have given theuj. To our rej)roach it must be said, 

 that though for a century and a half we have had under 

 cur eyes the races of black and of red men, they have 

 never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural his- 

 tory. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that 

 the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made 

 distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the 

 whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It 

 is not against experience to suppose, that different spe- 

 cies of the same genus, or varieties of the same spe- 

 cies, may possess different qualifications. Will not a 

 lover of natural history then, one who views the gra- 

 dations in all the races of animals with the eye of phi- 

 losophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the d«part 



