Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among
the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the
peculiar oestrum of the poet: their love is ardent; but it kindles the
senses only, not the imagination. Religion, or rather fanaticism,
has produced a _Phyllis Wheatly_; but it could not produce a poet.
Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his
letters do more credit to the heart than the head; supposing them to have
been genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points
which would not be easy of investigation. The improvement of the blacks in
body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has
been observed by every one, and proves their inferiority is not the effect
merely of their condition in life.

"The white slaves, among the Romans, were often their rarest artists; they
excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to
their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus, were slaves.
Whether further observation will, or will not, verify the conjecture, that
Nature has been less bountiful to them, in the endowments of the head, I
believe in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice.
That disposition to theft, with which they have been branded, must be
ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense.
The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself
less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for
ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must
give a reciprocation of right; that without this, they are mere arbitrary
rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience. And it is a
problem which I give the master to solve, whether the religious precepts
against the violation of property, were not formed for _him_, as well
as his slave, and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little
from one who has taken _all_ from him, as he would slay one that
would slay him?

"That a change in the relation in which a man is placed should change his
ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor confined to the
blacks; Homer tells us, it was so 2600 years ago:--'Jove fixed it certain,
that whatever day makes a man a slave, takes half his worth away.' But the
slaves Homer speaks of were whites.

"But to return to the blacks. Notwithstanding this considerat