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Show 216 ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCF. then is your conduCl: equally impious, who, by defiroying their faculties by the feverity of your difcipline, have reduced men, who had once the power of reafon, to an equality with the brute creation. C H A P. IX. The reader may perhaps think, that the reaivers have by this time expended all their arguments, but their il:orc is not fo cafily exhauil:ed. They are well aware that juftice, nature, and religion, will continue, as they have ever uniformly done, to oppofe their conduCl:. This has driven them to exert their ingenuity, and has occafioned that multiplicity of arguments to be found in the prefent queil:ion. Thefe arguments are of a different complexion from the former. They confiil: in comparing the fiate of }laves with that of [orne of the cla!fes of free men, and in certain fcenes of felicity, which the former are (aid to enjoy. It is affirmed that the puniihments which the Africans undergo, are lefs fevere than the military ; that th~ir life is happier than that of the Engli!h peafant; that they have * · the OF THE 'HUMAN SPECIES. 217 the advantages of manumillion; that they have their little fpots of ground, their holydays, their dances; in ihort, that their life is a fcene of fefiivity and mirth, and that they are much happier in the colonies than in their own country. Thefe reprefentations, which have been made out with much ingenuity and art, may have had their weight with the unwary; but they will never pafs with men of confideration · and fenfe, who are accufiomed to eil:imate the probability of things, before they admit them to be true. Indeed the bare a!fertion, that their fituation is even comfortable, contains iLs own refutation, or at leail: leads us to fufpeCl: that the perfon, who aflerted it, has omitted fome important confiderations in the account. Such we !hall !hew to have been aCl:ually the cafe, and that the reprefentations of the receivers, when il:ripped of their glo!fy ornaments, are but empty declamation. It is faid, firfi, of military punijhmmts, that they are more fevere than thofe which the Africans undergo. But this is a bare a!fertion wi~hout a proof. It is not !hewn even |