Do not you see the tormentors of St. Domingo, avail themselves of it
already, redoubling their strokes, and regarding their slaves as mere
machines, like the Cartesians do the brutes? They are not our
fellow-creatures will they say: a philosopher of Paris has proved it?

What! the blacks our equals! Have not they eyes, ears, a shape, and organs
like ours? Does nature follow another order, other laws for them?--Have not
they speech, that peculiar characteristic of humanity? But then the colour!
What of that? Are the pale white Albinos, the olive or copper coloured
Indians also of different species! Who does not know that colour is
accidental. They are not our equals! Have not they the same
faculties--reason, memory, imagination? Yes, you reply, but they have
written no books. Who told you so? Who told you there were no learned
blacks? And supposing it were so, if none but authors are men, the whole
human race is different from us.

Shall I tell you why there are no authors or men of learning among the
Negroes? What has made you what you are? Education and circumstances!--Now
where are the Negroes favoured by either? Consider them wherever they are
to be found.--In Africa, wretchedly enslaved by domestic tyrants; in our
islands perpetual martyrs; in the southern United States, the meanest of
slaves; in the northern, domestics; in Europe, universally contemned, every
where proscribed, like the Jews; in a word, every where in a state of
debasement.

I have been told that there are blacks of property in the northern parts of
America; but these, like the other settlers, are no more than sensible
farmers or traders.--There are no authors[3] among them, because there are
few rich and idle people in America.

What spring of action could raise a Negro from his debased condition? the
road to glory and honor is impassible to him: What then should he write
for? Besides, the blacks have reason to detest the sciences, for their
oppressors cultivate them but they do not make them better.

Shall we say that the Indians or Arabs are not our equals, because they
despise both our arts and our sciences? or the Quakers, because they
neither respect academies nor wits?

In short, if you will deny the Negroes souls, energy, sensibility,
gratitude or beneficence, I oppose you to yourself, I might quote your own
anecdote of Mr. Langdon's Negro, and abundance of other well known facts in
favour of the blacks. You may find some striking on