Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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That Is Profaning The
Noble Qualities Of The Mind And The Imagination, For The Purpose Of
Exculpating By Illusory Comparisons Or Captious Sophisms Excesses
Which Afflict Humanity, And Which Prepare The Way For Violent
Convulsions.
Do they think that they have acquired the right of
putting down commiseration, by comparing* the condition of the negroes
with that of the serfs of the middle ages, and with the state of
oppression to which some classes are still subjected in the north and
east of Europe?
(* Such comparisons do not satisfy those secret
partisans of the slave trade who try to make light of the miseries of
the black race, and to resist every emotion those miseries awaken. The
permanent condition of a caste founded on barbarous laws and
institutions is often confounded with the excesses of a power
temporarily exercised on individuals. Thus Mr. Bolingbroke, who lived
seven years at Demerara and who visited the West India Islands,
observes that "on board an English ship of war, flogging is more
frequent than in the plantations of the English colonies." He adds
"that in general the negroes are but little flogged, but that very
reasonable means of correction have been imagined, such as making them
take boiling soup strongly peppered, or obliging them to drink, with a
very small spoon, a solution of Glauber-salts." Mr. Bolingbroke
regards the slave-trade as a universal benefit; and he is persuaded
that if negroes who have enjoyed, during twenty years, all the
comforts of slave life at Demerara, were permitted to return to the
coast of Africa, they would effect recruiting on a large scale, and
bring whole nations to the English possessions.
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