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Show 176 ON THE SLAVERY AND CoMMERCit the £1me defcription. But we reply, that confidering their lituation as before defcribed, two perfons, above mediocrity in the literary way, are as many as can be expected within a certain period of years; and farther, that if thefe are prodigies, they are only fuch prodigies as every day would produce, if they had the f.1me opportunities of acquiring knowledge as other people, and the fame expectations in life to excite their genius. This has been conll:antly and folemnly afferted by the pious Benezet,* whom we have mentioned before, as having devoted a conliderable part of his time to their inll:ruction. This great man, for we cannot but mention him with veneration, had a better opportunity of knowing them than any perfon whatever, and he always· uniformly declared, that he could never find a difference between their capacities and thofe of other pjople; that they were as capable of reafoning as any individual Europeans; that they were as capable of the higheil: intellectual attainments; in • In the Preface. Jhort, or THE HuMAN SPECIES. 177 lhort, that their abilities were equal, and that they only wanted to be equally cultivated, to alford fpecimens of as line productions. Thus then does it appear from the tell:imony of this venerable man, whofe authority is fuffi cient of itfelf to filence all objections againll: African capacity, and from the inll:ances that have been produced, and the obfervations that have been made on the occafion, that if the minds of the Africans were unbroken by llavery; ii they had the f.1me expectations in life as other people, and the fame opportunities of improvement, they would be equal, in all the various branches of fcience, to the Europeans, and that the argument that ll:ates them " to be an infe~ " riour link of the chain of nature, and " defigned for fervitude," as far as it depends on the inferiority qf th~ir capacitiu, is wholly malevolent and falfe. * • As to Mr. Hume's alfertions with ref pea to African capa .. • city~ we have palled them over in filence, as they have been fo admirably refuted by th(: learned Dr. Beattie, in his Effay on Truth, to which we refer the reader. The whole of this ad· mirable refutation extends from p. +SS, to +6--1-. M CHAP. |