ey may know how to use
it when it shall be restored to them; for liberty itself is sometimes a
burden, when slavery has stupefied the soul.

Such blacks, therefore, as are so inconsiderate as to be concerned in
insurrections, are guilty of retarding the execution of the general plan
for their emancipation; for the question is not, at the present day,
whether a million of slaves ought to be set at liberty, but whether they
can when free, be put into a capacity of providing for the subsistence of
themselves and their families. Insurrections, far from effecting this
purpose, would destroy the means. Regard, therefore, to their own
interests, if there were no other motive, should therefore engage the
blacks to patient submission, and no doubt but they will yield it, if their
masters and the ministers of the gospel in particular, to whom the task of
comforting and instructing them, is committed, endeavour to prepare them
for approaching freedom.

You sir, have adopted the vulgar notion, that the Negroes born in Virginia,
are less depraved than those imported from Africa. You call the firmness
which is common in the early stages of their slavery _greater degeneracy;_
they are depraved, that is, in your language--they are wicked and
treacherous to those who have purchased them, or brought them from their
own country.--But in my mind, they are not depraved, because the acts of
violence their genius inspires them to revenge themselves upon their
tyrants, are justified by the rights of nature.

And why are those imported, more wicked in your opinion? In mine, more
quick, more ardent in their resentments? because, not having forgotten
their former situation, they feel their loss the more sensibly; and having
strong ideas, their resolutions are more firm and their actions more
violent, they not having yet contracted the habits of slavery.

They soon fall into that degree of apathy and insensibility, which you
unjustly believe to be natural to them; that is, in your language, they
become less depraved; but I would say that their depravity begins with this
apathy and weakness.--For depravity is the loss of nature, and the want of
those virtues inherent in man, courage and the love of liberty. Our readers
may judge from this article, how strangely writers have wrested words to
condemn these unhappy Negroes, and the unfortunate in general.

I do not, however, pretend to say, that the Negroes of Africa are all
good, or even that man