la Rochefoucald, the Marquis de
Condorcet, Messieurs Petion de Villeneuve, Claviere, and Brissot, and to
the Marquis de la Fayette. The latter received me with peculiar marks of
attention. He had long felt for the wrongs of Africa, and had done much to
prevent them. He had a plantation in Cayenne, and had devised a plan, by
which the labourers upon it should pass by degrees from slavery to freedom.
With this view he had there laid it down as a principle, that all crimes
were equal, whether they were committed by Blacks or Whites, and ought
equally to be punished. As the human mind is of such a nature, as to be
acted upon by rewards as well as punishments, he thought it unreasonable,
that the slaves should have no advantage from a stimulus from the former.
He laid it down therefore as another principle, that temporal profits
should follow virtuous action. To this he subjoined a reasonable education
to be gradually given. By introducing such principles, and by making
various regulations for the protection and comforts of the slaves, he
thought he could prove to the planters, that there was no necessity for the
Slave-trade; that the slaves upon all their estates would increase
sufficiently by population; that they might be introduced gradually, and
without detriment, to a state of freedom; and that then the real interests
of all would be most promoted. This system he had begun to act upon two
years before I saw him. He had also, when the society was established in
Paris, which took the name of The Friends of the Negros, enrolled himself a
member of it.

The first public steps taken after my arrival in Paris were at a committee
of the Friends of the Negros, which was but thinly attended. None of those
mentioned, except Brissot, were present. It was resolved there, that the
committee should solicit an audience of Mr. Necker; and that I should wait
upon him, accompanied by a deputation consisting of the Marquis de
Condorcet, Monsieur de Bourge, and Brissot de Warwille; Secondly, that the
committee should write to the president of the National Assembly, and
request the favour of him to appoint a day for hearing the cause of the
Negros; and, Thirdly, that it should be recommended to the committee in
London to draw up a petition to the National Assembly of France, praying
for the abolition of the Slave-trade by that country. This petition, it was
observed, was to be signed by as great a number of the friends to the cause
in Engla