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304 



IMPOLICY OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 



country is an enemy of which the state is sanc- 

 tioning the introduction. Besides, Brazil is not 

 in want of them, and even if that country made 

 the greatest possible use of every individual 

 whom it at present possesses, (which it does not,) 

 and yet urgently and necessarily required an 

 additional number of hands to continue the cul- 

 tivation of the lands, the transportation of Afri- 

 cans is the worst manner of obtaining them, 

 even in a political point of view. If, however, 

 upon Africans alone its advancement was to de- 

 pend, many years must pass before any great 

 change would be seen in its riches and power, 

 and consequently in its progress to the rank of a 

 great nation. Brazil is, however, in a far dif- 

 ferent situation ; her free population is nu- 

 merous, and the time seems to have almost 

 arrived, when this part of the community would 

 take its proper place in society in spite of exist- 

 ing regulations. * So much do I imagine this to 



* I met with the following passage in a work of high and 

 deserved reputation: — " The Romans, notwithstanding their 

 prodigious losses in the incessant wars which they carried 

 on for centuries, never experienced any want of men in the 

 early periods of the commonwealth ; but were even able to 

 send colonies abroad out of their redundant population. 

 Afterwards, in the time of the Emperors, when the armies 

 were generally kept in camps and garrisons, where a soldier 

 is perhaps the healthiest of all professions, the Roman popu- 

 lation in Italy had greatly diminished, and was visibly de- 

 clining every day, owing to a change in the division of 

 property, and to the pernicious and monstrous increase of 



