.362 HISTORY OF THE [book, it. 
such observations as have occurred to me on the 
several matters, of which I proposed to treat. I 
have declined to enlarge on the various calumnies* 
and gross misrepresentations, which have been 
spread and encouraged against the planters, be- 
cause it is their misfortune that, on this question, 
many virtuous, humane, and pious men, misled by 
popular prejudice, openly concur in, and give their 
sanction to, the malignant efforts, and uncharitable 
misconstructions of the envious and illiberal. Such 
proceedings, however, are as impolitic as they are 
unjust. They are equally injurious to the master and 
the slave. By exciting among the negroes a spirit of 
discontent and disobedience, they compel, in many 
cases, the benevolent man to restrain that hand 
which otherwise would be stretched out for their 
relief; and thus, by rendering their masters odious 
in their eyes, these unfortunate people (apprized at 
the same time that they are held in a subjection 
which is reprobated in the mother country) may be 
led to make a general struggle for freedom, through 
desolation and bloodshed. Far be it from me, howe¬ 
ver, to impute motives so atrocious to any of those 
respectable characters, whose exertions for an aboli¬ 
tion of the slave trade are at this time the object of 
public attention. Most of these gentlemen, with¬ 
out doubt, consider this measure as only the first 
process in a more extended and liberal plan, which 
has for its object, by stopping the further influx of 
negroes into our islands, to compel the planters to 
cherish and husband their present stock; and sus¬ 
tain it in future by natural increase; until, by mild- 
