CONSIDBEATIONS ON SLATEBl, 
271 
which external politics map pra.luce in the situation of the 
West Indies. I have merely examined what regards the 
organization of human society; the unequal partition of 
rights and of the enjoyments of life ; the threatening dan- 
gers which the wisdom of the legislator and the moderation 
ot free men may ward off, whatever be the form of the 
government. It is for the traveller who has been an eye- 
witness of the suffering aud the degradation of human na- 
ture, to make the complaints of the unfortunate reach the 
ear of those by wdiom they can be relieved. I observed the 
condition of the blacks in countries wliere the laws, the 
religion, aud the national habits tend to mitigate their fate ; 
yet I retained, on quitting America, the same horror of 
slavery which I had felt in Europe. In vain have writers 
of ability, seeking to veil barbarous institutions by ingenious 
turns of language, invented the expressions “negro peasants 
of the West Indies,” “black vassalage,” and “patriarchal 
protection:” that is profaning the noble qualities of the mind 
and the imagination, for the purpose of exculpating by illusory 
Comparisons, or captious sophisms excesses which afflict hu- 
uiauity, and which prepare the way for violent convulsions. 
3o they think that they have acquired the right of putting 
down commiseration, by comparing * the condition of the 
* Such comparisons do not satisfy those secret partisans of the slave- 
trade, who try to make light of the miseries of the black race, and to 
resist every emotion those miseries awaken. The pennanetit condition of 
a caste founded on barbarous laws and institutions, is often confounded 
with the excesses of a jiower temporarily exercised on individuals. Thus 
Mr, Bolingbroke, who lived seven years at Oemerara, and who visited the 
^'est India Islands, observes that “ on board an English ship of war, 
flogging is more frequent than in the plantations of the English colonies.” 
He adds, *Hhat in general the negroes are but little flogged, but that very 
reasonable means of correction have been imagined, such as making them 
take boiling soup strongly peppered, or obliging them to drink, with a 
very small spoon, a solutitm of Glauber-saUs.^' Mr, Bolingbroke regards 
the slave-trade as an universal benertt ; and he is persuaded that if negroes 
who have enjoyed, during twenty years, all the comforts of slave life at 
I^emerara, were permitted to return to the coast of Africa, they would 
^‘ffect recruiting on a large scale, and bring whole nations to the English 
possessions. {^Voyage to 7>em«'ara, 1807). Such is the firm and frank 
profession of faith of a planter ; yet Mr. Bolingbroke, as several passages 
of his book prove, is a moderate man, full of benevolent intenth ns towards 
fhe slaves. 
