of the violence and cruelty, but only
feared the ill success of their inhuman enterprises; that they carried
men like themselves, their brethren, and the off-spring of the same
common parent, to be sold like beasts of prey, or beasts of burden, and
put them to the same reproachful trial, of their soundness, strength,
and capacity for greater bodily service; that quite forgetting and
renouncing the original dignity of human nature, communicated to all,
they treated them with more severity, and ruder discipline, than even
the _ox_ or the _ass_, who are _void of understanding_--should we not,
if this had been the case, have naturally been led to despise all their
_pretended refinements of morality_; and to have concluded, that as they
were not nations destitute of politeness, they must have been _entire
strangers to virtue and benevolence_?

"But notwithstanding this, we ourselves (who profess to be christians,
and boast of the peculiar advantage we enjoy, by means of an express
revelation of our duty from heaven) are, in effect, these very untaught
and rude heathen countries. With all our superior light, we instill into
those, whom we call savage and barbarous, the most despicable opinion of
human nature. We, to the utmost of our power, weaken and dissolve the
universal tie, that binds and unites mankind. We practise what we should
exclaim against, as the utmost excess of cruelty and tyranny, if nations
of the world, differing in colour, and form of government, from
ourselves, were so possessed of empire, as to be able to reduce us to a
state of unmerited and brutish servitude. Of consequence, we sacrifice
our reason, our humanity, our christianity, to an unnatural sordid gain.
We teach other nations to despise, and trample under foot, all the
obligations of social virtue. We take the most effectual method to
prevent the propagation of the gospel, by representing it as a scheme of
power and barbarous oppression, and an enemy to the natural privileges
and rights of men.

"Perhaps all that I have now offered, may be of very little weight to
restrain this enormity, this aggravated iniquity; however, I still have
the satisfaction of having entered my private protest against a
practice, which, in my opinion, bids that God, who is the God and Father
of the Gentiles, unconverted to christianity, most daring and bold
defiance, and spurns at all the principles both of natural and revealed
religion."

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