barous than the Negroes. Slaves in Guinea used with much greater
lenity than the Negroes are in the colonies.--Note. How the slaves are
treated in Algiers, as also in Turkey.

Such is the woeful corruption of human nature, that every practice which
flatters our pride and covetousness, will find its advocates! This is
manifestly the case in the matter before us; the savageness of the
Negroes in some of their customs, and particularly their deviating so
far from the feelings of humanity, as to join in captivating and selling
each other, gives their interested oppressors a pretence for
representing them as unworthy of liberty, and the natural rights of
mankind. But these sophisters turn the argument full upon themselves,
when they instigate the poor creatures to such shocking impiety, by
every means that fantastic subtilty can suggest; thereby shewing in
their own conduct, a more glaring proof of the same depravity, and, if
there was any reason in the argument, a greater unfitness for the same
precious enjoyment: for though some of the ignorant Africans may be thus
corrupted by their intercourse with the baser of the European natives,
and the use of strong liquors, this is no excuse for high-professing
christians; bred in a civilized country, with so many advantages unknown
to the Africans, and pretending to a superior degree of gospel light.
Nor can it justify them in raising up fortunes to themselves from the
misery of others, and calmly projecting voyages for the seizure of men
naturally as free as themselves; and who, they know, are no otherwise to
be procured than by such barbarous means, as none but those hardened
wretches, who are lost to every sense of christian compassion, can make
use of. Let us diligently compare, and impartially weigh, the situation
of those ignorant Negroes, and these enlightened christians; then lift
up the scale and say, which of the two are the greater savages.

Slavery has been of a long time in practice in many parts of Asia; it
was also in usage among the Romans when that empire flourished; but,
except in some particular instances, it was rather a reasonable
servitude, no ways comparable to the unreasonable and unnatural service
extorted from the Negroes in our colonies. A late learned author,[A]
speaking of those times which succeeded the dissolution of that empire,
acquaints us, that as christianity prevailed, it very much removed those
wrong prejudices and practices, which had taken r