PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 



89 



Spain to a free people, in which the Cubans would be 

 included, would produce such a complete and radical 

 change in the disposition of her servile class, we are 

 not informed, and we cannot conceive. The relation 

 between master and slave is the same in Cuba and 

 in the United States ; and if the European writer 

 draws his conclusion from a supposed savage dispo- 

 sition on the part of the native Africans, now in 

 Cuba, we think he judges them without a personal 

 knowledge of their character, that he forgets two 

 essential points ; that they were not warriors, but 

 mere slaves in Africa, and have never known any- 

 other condition; and that they never have been 

 exposed, by community of language, and facility of 

 access, to the bloodthirsty teachings of European 

 philanthropy. 



The economical anticipations of Mr. Robertson 

 and the reviewer may, or may not be realized ; but 

 we can have no great confidence in the anticipations 

 of the political economy of the European philan- 

 thropists, while we contemplate the disastrous results 

 which have attended the experiment of their social 

 theories in the British West Indies. On this point 

 we would suggest to them a consideration of the 

 wise observations of Baron Humboldt, addressed to 

 •those who anticipated direful results from the cessa- 

 tion of the slave-trade : 



