PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 



53 



sumptuous Queen Elizabeth, and millions now re- 

 joice in the once highly-esteemed luxury of stockings. 



It has become orthodox with modern humani- 

 tarians to question the humanity of the theory of 

 Las Casas. If we could have an impartial view of 

 the condition of the great mass of negroes in Africa, 

 of their social and military slavery from the earliest 

 ages, subject to the sway of barbarous native chiefs, 

 it might be found that his argument in favor of the 

 change from a savage to a civilized master, was not so 

 inconclusive as is now supposed ; and that the step 

 itself was not so cruel as it has been, and still is 

 painted. But if we doubt the humanity of the social 

 theories of Las Casas, and the humanitarians of the 

 sixteenth century, what verdict may not posterity 

 accord to those of Wilberforce and the humanita- 

 rians of the nineteenth century, when it contemplates 

 the results of their social experiments in St. Domingo, 

 Jamaica, and the other islands of the American 

 Archipelago. 



The two unmixed races exist in Cuba, under a 

 social organization in which the inferior is subject to 

 the superior race, to the manifest material and moral 

 advantage of both. The material condition of the 

 inferior or slave race, is not that degraded and suffer- 

 ing state of deprivation, which the reasoners upon 

 the abstract question of slavery assume it to be. On 



