They Will Crayon Out An Animal, A Plant, Or A Country, So As To Prove The Existence Of A Germe In Their Minds, Which Only Wants Cultivation.

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.

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