They Astonish You With Strokes Of The Most Sublime Oratory, Such As Prove Their Reason And Sentiment Strong, Their Imagination Glowing And Elevated; But Never Yet Could I Find A Black, That Had Uttered A Thought Above The Level Of Plain Narration[Footnote:

"Sleep hab no massa," was the answer of a sleepy negro, who was told that his massa called him.

- See Edward's History of Jamaica, 2d Vol.]; never see even an elementary trait of painting, or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune, and time; and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch[Footnote: "The instrument proper to them is the _banjore_, which they brought here from Africa, and which is the origin of the guitar, it's chords being precisely the four lower chords of that instrument." J - - N.]. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony[Footnote: From this circumstance, I conceive our author's _catch_ was improperly so called.], is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet: their love is ardent; but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion, or rather fanaticism, has produced a _Phyllis Wheatly_; but it could not produce a poet. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more credit to the heart than the head; supposing them to have been genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be easy of investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition in life.

"The white slaves, among the Romans, were often their rarest artists; they excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus, were slaves. Whether further observation will, or will not, verify the conjecture, that Nature has been less bountiful to them, in the endowments of the head, I believe in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft, with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience. And it is a problem which I give the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property, were not formed for _him_, as well as his slave, and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken _all_ from him, as he would slay one that would slay him?

"That a change in the relation in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor confined to the blacks; Homer tells us, it was so 2600 years ago: - 'Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day makes a man a slave, takes half his worth away.' But the slaves Homer speaks of were whites.

"But to return to the blacks. Notwithstanding this consideration, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity; and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.

"The opinion that they are inferiour in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to optical glasses, to analysis by fire or solvents: how much more, then, when it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of it's existence are various, and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, in a circumstance where our conclusions would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings, which their Creator may perhaps have given them! To our reproach it must be said, though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks[Footnote: Where Jefferson makes use of the word _Black_, in this extract, it is rigidly confined to the _Negroes_ originally from the coast of Africa, or their descendants.], whether originally a distinct race, or made so by time and circumstances, are inferiour to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."

* * * * *

_Boston, December 29th, 1796._

DEAR FRIEND,

Upon my arrival here, I had once more the mortification to find myself in the neighbourhood of the yellow fever, which had lately been imported. The uncommon, early, and severe north-west winds entirely prevented it from spreading; a fortunate circumstance for the inhabitants of Boston, as, from the narrowness of their streets, great population, and other circumstances, it must have been very fatal, had it not been by this means destroyed.

In order to give you the most regular account of this disorder I could procure, I must repeat several circumstances from former letters.

The yellow fever, which has lately been so fatal, is a _new disorder_, first brought to the West Indies, in a slave-ship from the coast of Africa, late in the year 1792.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 31 of 34
Words from 31030 to 32048 of 35016