262 - TRAVELS IN THE 
of their conduct, no complete justification can be offered, be- 
cause theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it must be 
observed, that they are not habitually and generally guilty of 
it towards each other. This, however, is an important circum- 
stance in mitigation ; and, before we pronounce them a more 
depraved people than any other, it were well to consider 
whether the lower order of people in any part of Europe, would 
have acted, under similar circumstances, with greater honesty 
towards a stranger, than the Negroes acted towards me. It 
must not be forgotten, that the laws of the country afforded 
me no protection; that every one was at liberty to rob me with 
impunity; and finally, that some part of my effects were of as 
great value, in the estimation of the Negroes, as pearls and 
diamonds would have been in the eyes of a European. Let us 
suppose, a black merchant of Hindostan to have found his way 
into the centre of England, with a box of jewels at his back; 
and that the laws of the kingdom afforded him no security ; in 
such a case, the wonder would be, not that the stranger was 
robbed of any part of his riches, but that any part was left for 
a second depredator. Such, on sober reflection, is the judg- 
ment I have formed concerning the pilfering disposition of the 
Mandingo Negroes towards myself. Notwithstanding I was so 
great a sufferer by it, I do not consider that their natural 
sense of justice was perverted or extinguished: it was over- 
powered only, for the moment, by the strength of a temptation 
which it required no common virtue to resist. 
On the other hand, as some counterbalance to this depravity 
in their nature, allowing it to be such, it is impossible for me 
