, he loses the powers of
sensation; he loses the man; he sickens or becomes a brute. It is slavery
alone which can reduce a man to a level with the brute creation, and
sometimes deprives him of all sensibility; but you blame nature, that kind
parent, who would have us all equal, free and happy, for the crime of
social barbarity, and you pass by this crime, to extenuate another, to
extenuate the horrid torments of slavery! Not satisfied with violating
nature, by abusing her offspring, even in her name, you encourage
slaveholders to torment them.

Do you not arm their tyrants, when you tell them, the insensibility of the
Negroes alleviates their torments?

What! because greatness of soul raised Sidney above the terrors of death,
the infernal Jefferies[1] who caused his execution, was less guilty!
because the Quakers appeared insensible to insults, blows, or punishments,
they are less to be pitied, and it was right to martyr them! A dangerous
notion, whose consequences I am sure you would disapprove. If this
insensibility with which you reproach the Negroes mitigated the cruelty of
their masters, it were well: but their tormentors do not wish them not to
feel; they would have them all feeling, for the pleasure of torturing them;
and their punishments are increased in proportion to their insensibility.

Seeing the Negroes, say you, "Ill lodged, ill cloathed, and often overcome
with labour, I concluded that their treatment had been as rigorous as it is
elsewhere. Notwithstanding I have been assured that it is very mild,
compared to what they suffer in the Sugar Colonies."

Why this comparison, which seems to insinuate a justification of the
Virginians? does a misfortune cease to be such, because there is a greater
elsewhere? Was Cartouche less detestable because Brinvilliers had existed
before him? Let us not weaken by comparisons the idea of criminality, nor
lessen the attention due to the miserable, this were to countenance the
crime. The Negroes are ill lodged, ill cloathed, oppressed with labour in
Virginia: this is the fact, this is the offence. It matters not whether
they are worse treated elsewhere; in whatever degree they are so in
Virginia, it is still outrage and injustice.

And again, why are the Negroes of Virginia less cruelly treated? Humanity
is not the motive, it is because covetousness cannot obtain so much from
their labours, as in the Sugar Islands. Was it otherwise, they would be
sacrificed to it here