le conditions."
"These edicts were carried into immediate execution within the royal
domain."--"In England, as the spirit of liberty gained ground, the very
name and idea of personal servitude, without any formal interposition of
the legislature to prohibit it, was totally banished." "The effects of
such a remarkable change in the condition of so great a part of the
people, could not fail of being considerable and extensive. The
husbandman, master of his own industry, and secure of reaping for
himself the fruits of his labour, became farmer of the same field where
he had formerly been compelled to toil for the benefit of another. The
odious name of master and of slave, the most mortifying and depressing
of all distinctions to human nature, were abolished. New prospects
opened, and new incitements to ingenuity and enterprise presented
themselves, to those who were emancipated. The expectation of bettering
their fortune, as well as that of raising themselves to a more
honourable condition, concurred in calling forth their activity and
genius; and a numerous class of men, who formerly had no political
existence, and were employed merely as instruments of labour, became
useful citizens, and contributed towards augmenting the force or riches
of the society, which adopted them as members." William Robertson's
history of Charles the 5th, vol. 1, P. 35. ]

If instead of making slaves of the Negroes, the nations who assume the
name and character of christians, would use their endeavours to make the
nations of Africa acquainted with the nature of the christian religion,
to give them a better sense of the true use of the blessings of life,
the more beneficial arts and customs would, by degrees, be introduced
amongst them; this care probably would produce the same effect upon
them, which it has had on the inhabitants of Europe, formerly as savage
and barbarous as the natives of Africa. Those cruel wars amongst the
blacks would be likely to cease, and a fair and honorable commerce, in
time, take place throughout that vast country. It was by these means
that the inhabitants of Europe, though formerly a barbarous people,
became civilized. Indeed the account Julius Caesar gives of the ancient
Britons in their state of ignorance, is not such as should make us proud
of ourselves, or lead us to despise the unpolished nations of the earth;
for he informs us, "That they lived in many respects like our Indians,
being clad with skins, paintin