which, people, endued with the same feelings and
faculties as ourselves, were made subject to the laws and limitations of
_possession_.

This commerce of the human species was of a very early date. It was
founded on the idea that men were _property_; and, as this idea was
coeval with the first order of _involuntary_ slaves, it must have
arisen, (if the date, which we previously affixed to that order, be
right) in the first practices of barter. The Story of Joseph, as
recorded in the sacred writings, whom his brothers sold from an envious
suspicion of his future greatness, is an ample testimony of the truth of
this conjecture. It shews that there were men, even at that early
period, who travelled up and down as merchants, collecting not only
balm, myrrh, spicery, and other wares, but the human species also, for
the purposes of traffick. The instant determination of the brothers, on
the first sight of the merchants, _to sell him_, and the immediate
acquiescence of these, who purchased him for a foreign market, prove
that this commerce had been then established, not only in that part of
the country, where this transaction happened, but in that also, whither
the merchants were then travelling with their camels, namely, AEgypt: and
they shew farther, that, as all customs require time for their
establishment, so it must have existed in the ages, previous to that of
Pharaoh; that is, in those ages, in which we fixed the first date of
_involuntary_ servitude. This commerce then, as appears by the
present instance, existed in the earliest practices of barter, and had
descended to the AEgyptians, through as long a period of time, as was
sufficient to have made it, in the times alluded to, an established
custom. Thus was AEgypt, in those days, the place of the greatest resort;
the grand emporium of trade, to which people were driving their
merchandize, as to a centre; and thus did it afford, among other
opportunities of traffick, the _first market_ that is recorded, for
the sale of the human species.

This market, which was thus supplied by the constant concourse of
merchants, who resorted to it from various parts, could not fail, by
these means, to have been considerable. It received, afterwards, an
additional supply from those piracies, which we mentioned to have
existed in the uncivilized ages of the world, and which, in fact, it
greatly promoted and encouraged; and it became, from these united
circumstances, so famous, as to