y of them are not depraved. But is this fact to be
imputed to them as a personal crime? Ought you not rather to have ascribed
it to the foreign source by which they are corrupted. Alike in them and in
the whites, the depravity of man is a consequence of his wretchedness, and
the usurpation of his rights. Wherever he is free and at ease, he is good;
wherever the contrary, he is wicked. Neither his nature nor the climate
corrupt him, but the government of his country. Now that of the Negroes is
almost universally despotic, such as must necessarily debase and corrupt
the Negro.

How much is the depravity, occasioned by the government of his country,
increased by his second slavery, far worse than the first--for he is no
longer among friends in his native land--surrounded by the pleasing scenes
of his childhood, he is among monsters who are going to live by, and trade
in his blood, and has nothing before his eyes but death, or oppression
equivalent to an endless punishment.

How is it possible such horrid prospects should not fire his soul? How, if
chance should present him with arms and liberty, should he resist using
them, to put an end to his own existence, or that of his tormentors? What
white man would be less cruel in his situation? Truly I think myself of a
humane disposition, that I love my fellow-creatures and detest the effusion
of blood, but if ever a villain, white or black, should snatch me from my
freedom, my family, and my friends, should overwhelm me with outrages and
blows, to gratify his caprice, should extend his barbarities to my wife and
children--my blood boils at the thought--perhaps in a transport of
revenge.... If such vengeance would be lawful in me, what makes the Negro
more guilty? Why should that be called wickedness and depravity in him,
which would be stiled virtue in me, in you, in every white man? Are not my
rights the same as his? Is not nature our common parent? God his father as
well as mine? His conscience an infallible guide as well as mine? Let us
then no longer make other laws for the blacks than those we are bound by
ourselves, since Heaven has placed them on a level with us, has made them
like us, since they are our brethren and our fellow-creatures.

Here you stop me, you say that _the Negro is not our fellow-creature, that
he is below the white_.

How could so shocking an opinion escape the pen of a member of the Royal
Academy, a writer who would be thought a friend of mankind!