474 APPENDIX. 



of so much human miseiy, that its eontinuance is disgraceful to us 

 as men and as Christians. 



2d. That the culture of the West-India islands could go on 

 with equal advantage and much greater security, if no further im- 

 portation of slaves were to take place. 



With regard to the first argument, it appears, in the Essay on 

 the Principle of Population, that so great is the tendency of man- 

 kind to increase, that nothing but some physical or moral check, 

 operating in an excessive ruA unusual degree, can permanently keep 

 the population of a country below the average means of subsistence. 

 In the West-India islands a constant recruit of labouring negroes 

 is necessary; and consequently the immediate checks to population 

 must operate with excessive and unusual force. All the checks to 

 population were found resolvable into moi-al restraint, vice and 

 misery. In a state of slavery moral restraint cannot have much 

 influence ; nor in any state will it ever continue permanently to 

 diminish the population. The whole eflfect, therefore, is to be at- 

 tributed to the excessive and unusual action of vice and misery; and 

 a reference to the facts contained in the Essay incontrovertibly 

 proves that the condition of the slaves in the West Indies, taken 

 altogether, is most wretched, and that the representations of the 

 friends of the abolition cannot easily have been exaggerated. 



It will be said that the principal reason, why the slaves in the 

 West Indies constantly diminish, is, that the sexes are not in equal 

 numbers, a considerable majority of males being always imported; 

 but this very circumstance decides at once on the cruelty of their 

 situation, and must necessarily be one powerful cause of their de- 

 giaded moral condition. 



It may be said also, that many towns do not keep up their num- 

 bers, and yet that the same objection is not made to them on that 

 account. But the cases will admit of no comparison. If, for the 

 sake of better society or higher wages, people are willing to expose 

 themselves to a less pure air and greater temptations to vice, no 

 hardship is suffered that can reasonably be complained of. The 

 superior mortality of towns falls principally upon children, and is 

 scarcely noticed by people of mature age. The sexes are in equal 

 numbers; and every man, after a few years of industry, may look 

 forward to the happiness of domestic life. If during the time 

 that he is thus waiting, he acquires vicious habits which indispose 

 him to marriage, he has nobody to blame except himself. But 

 with the negroes the case is totally different. The unequal num- 

 ber of the sexes shuts out at once the majority of them from all 

 chance of domestic happiness. They have no hope of this kind to 

 sweeten their toils and animate their exertions; but are necessarily 

 condemned either to unceasing privation or to the most vicious ex- 

 cesses; and thus shut out from every cheering prospect, we cannot 

 be surprised that they are in general ready to welcome that death, 

 which so many meet with in the prime of life. 



