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earth. Slavery therefore does not appear to have been forbidden, but allowed by the law of Chrift, as well as that of Mofes, by the univerfal practice of all former ages and nations, and by the prophecies concerning the day of judgment, fo that there feems reason to fuppofe it will still remain, as long as the world itself exists.

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ESIDES the legality of carrying on the African trade, it may be

proper to hear the West Indians fpeak for themselves as to their neceffity of having negroes, and the right and title by which they hold them, when purchased.

An Extract from Candid Confiderations on the Judgment lately awarded in the Negroe-Cause, by the Court of King's Bench. By a Weft India Merchant:

[This author contends that, as Magna Charta related only to freemen, and left villeins and bondmen in their former state of flavery, (infisting fimply on the caufe of imprisonments being shown, when they happened to be thus punished, by their lords) and that, as the law had never any negroes in contemplation, the courts of law ought not to have shown them more favour than to villeins, if any fuch remained in the kingdom. He afferts, that whites are incapable of cultivating our plantations, and that therefore flaves are neceffary.]

THE nature of the Weft India climate, and the impoffibility of clearing and cultivating the foil there, by any other than negroe labourers, as it was firft the occafion of employing them, fo it must ever remain, as long as our colonies exist; because, this natural neceffity is not to be cured by any alternative. Some writers have affirmed, that the fugar iflands were firft cultivated by white men, who fhewed no unfitness for labour there, before negroe flaves were introduced; but thefe authors deal in reveries, and feem fubject and the climate they treat upon.

entirely ignorant both of the According to Ligon's account,

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the English, who first settled at Barbadoes about the year 1625, found the woods fo thick, most of the trees fo large and mafilve, that they were unable to clear the ground of them; by which means, he says, that twenty years afterwards he found potatoes, maize, and bonavifts, planted between the boughs, lying along upon the furface. Potatoes, corn, and pulse, were all they were able to plant for fubfiftence; and thefe, with the wild hogs they occafionally flew, ferved only to keep life and foul. together. The only produce they could cultivate for export, was tobacco, which (probably for want of fufficient cleaning the ground). turned out so worthless as to yield no profit at the English market. The prolific quality of the land, then fresh and unimpaired, made fome little amends for want of adequate culture; or otherwife they would in all likelihood have been deftitute of any vegetable crops for their fupport: yet fewer hands were at that time required to cultivate the foil than afterwards; for, on their first forming their fugar eftates, one hundred negroes could manage the largest plantation in the island. Nothing effectual was done towards a profitable fettlement of the island, until after the introduction of negroes; by whose better capacity for field labour, it became fo thriving, that, in 1646, it contained twenty thousand whites, and the blacks amounted to a far greater number. The judicious Linde, speaking from his own experience, remarks," that there are some services of such a nature as cannot well be performed in hot and unhealthy countries by Europeans, without imminent danger of their health and lives. The first is, that of cutting down woods, or clearing the ground. from trees, shrubs, &c." In proof of this affertion he gives several inftances; fome of which, I fhall repeat after him. "At the conclufion of the late peace, the Captain of a ship of war went ashore at the island of Dominica, with twelve of his men, to cut down the wood, and to clear a piece of ground which he intended to have purchased; but in a few days, fickness obliged them to defift from this, dangerous work; the Captain, and eleven out of his twelve affiftants, being feized with. violent fevers, of which several died. The Ludlow-Castle, a fhip of warof forty guns, in a late voyage to the coast of Guinea, lost twenty-five of her men at Sierra Leon, who were employed in cutting wood for the ship.

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fhip. When the Lion, Spence, and fome other fhips of war, were employed at Port Antonio, in Jamaica, in clearing Navy Island of wood, in order to erect ftorehouses for the fquadron on that station, the men, while cutting it down, were feized with a fever and delirium. The phrenzy attacked a man fo fuddenly, and with fo much fury, that with his hatchet, if not prevented, he would have cut to pieces the perfons who stood near him; and those who were feized in this manner, and were left to remain on shore, either died, or suffered a dangerous fit of fickness. This is an occupation (fays the fame author) which has often proved deftructive to Europeans in those climates, and in which they ought never to be employed, efpecially in the rainy season; there being numberless inftances of white perfons, when cutting down the woods at that season, who have been taken ill in the morning, and died at night." He adds (although he is no advocate for flavery) that, "if the purchasing of negroes on the coast of Guinea can be justified, it must be from the abfolute neceffity there is for employing them, inftead of white perfons, in such services as thefe." To the foregoing I may venture to fubjoin another history, the truth of which is well known to many gentlemen of Jamaica. I mean the cafe of the Palatines; feveral of whom having come over not many years ago, to fettle there under the encouragements granted by the affembly of that island, had tracts of wood-land affigned them; but, for want of negroes, were utterly incapable of clearing it from the trees, and perished for the moft part in the attempt. If this example, among others which my memory furnishes, is disregarded, due credit, I hope, will be given to the preceding relations published by Mr. Linde, an evidence wholly difinterested in the iffue of this question. If our seamen, who are the hardiest of our common people, and the most inured to the change of climate, are fo unequal to the task, much less adapted to it are others of the lower clafs in England, or those who might be most likely to hire themselves out to Plantation fervice: I have only mentioned the felling of trees in the Weft Indies (some of which are feveral feet in diameter, and fo hard as to fhiver the best tempered axe,) in order to the forming of new fettlements; but the labour of breaking up, and hoeing the ground, in the manner proper for cane-planting, and

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under a full exposure to the fun, is no less impracticable to Europeans, whether feasoned or unfeasoned to the climate. Slave-holding might perhaps be very well discontinued in every province of the North Amecan continent, fituated to the North of the Carolinas. The cuftom of introducing negroes in the northern colonies, to perform their field-work, has rendered the labour of the white inhabitants extremely dear. This high rate has given cause to their continuing the employment of negroes there, whose labour is no further neceffary than as it is cheaper. This will probably terminate of itself, whenever the white inhabitants shall be fo multiplied, by their natural progress of increase, as to allow a fuitable abundance of them for all employments. But in the southern continental province, and the fugar islands, this practice cannot be laid aside, so long as we perfist in the cultivation of them for the purposes of trade; because, it is impoffible to cultivate them with European labourers; and because the white inhabitants, I prefume, can never increase there by propagation in fufficient numbers. The natives, or Creoles, are the only whites who can be fuppofed, by thofe acquainted with these climates, to be capable of being brought, by long habit and ufe, to the laborious occupations of husbandry, and forming new fettlements with their own hands: But, unless families in general were poorer, hindered by their neceffities from removing to Europe, and confined to their native spot, there to breed and multiply, no adequate number could be reasonably expected. In Jamaica alone, we should require twenty times the number of white inhabitants we now have there. A long feries of time must pass away before such a stock of native whites could be acquired, by the ordinary course of increase. Even if we should suppose that they married regularly, and doubled their number, like the North Americans, once in every twenty or twenty-two years, it would require near one hundred years to furnish the complement; and then we must further suppose great part of the whole number fo very indigent, as to be obliged to toil hard for a subsistance, and to prefer the labour of clearing woodland and digging the earth to any other. If the labouring people, in any commercial country, are in proportion to the rest of the inhabitants as four to one, we should require a very large ftock, to furnish a constant and

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and sufficient number of Plantation labourers; indeed many more than we could hope to gain by natural propagation, fince it is not probable that they could by any means be brought to encrease, grow up, and thrive, in the like rapid manner as we obferve of the North Americans. Most certain it is, that, without the introduction of negroe flaves, Great Britain would have been able to settle no one profitable colony in America. If therefore, following what has been rightly called the Utopian system of Georgia, which brought that settlement to nothing, we should inhibit the further profecution of our African trade for labourers, fuch a measure would probably, if not infallibly, be attended with the hafty decline of our most valuable colonies in the weft; and a lofs of all the important advantages now gained from their cultivation. A barbarity might be perhaps the more immediate confequence of fuch a prohibition ; and of such a nature, as defervedly to excite horror in the mind of every humane Briton; I mean, the practice which must then be fallen upon, of employing white labourers, when negroes could no longer be procured, to keep up the number answerable to our cultivation; an employment in which thousands and ten thousands of our countrymen might perish miferably, without producing one fingle benefit to the mother country. Before we entered into the African flave trade, our first fettlers had no other than these hired fervants, who proved unequal to the task, and might literally be said to exhaust themselves in digging their own graves. It was a complaint in the administration of Colonel D'Oyley, long before the establishment of sugar-works in Jamaica, that the officers of his army harraffed and destroyed the common foldiers (though well feasoned to the climate) by employing them as field labourers. This utter inaptitude of Europeans to fuch occupations in hot climates, and the impoffibility of fupplying them with white labourers from any other fource than Europe, leave no room for questioning, but that we must either abandon all these fettlements, ruin many thousands of our fellow fubjects, and resign our fortune into the hands of foreign powers, differing from us in fentiments; or we must conduct them, as hitherto we have fuccessfully done, by the labour of negroes; whofe conftitutions being by nature and

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