View notes

Transcription

                                                             (   15   )

as

the fruitful mother of an hundred more:

and many of the unfortunate people have there been in this state, whose descendants even in the compast of of two or three generations have gone near to realize the calculation.---The great increase of slavery in the fourtern, in proportion to the northern states in the union, is therefore not attributable, solely, to the effect of sentiment, butto natural causes; as well as those considerations of profit, which have, perhaps, an equal influence over the conduct of mankind in general, in whatever country, or whatever climate their destiny hath paced them. What else but considerations of this nature could have influenced the merchants of the freest nation, at that time in the world, to embark in sio nefarious a traffic, as that of the human race, attended, as the African slave trade has been, with the most atrocious aggravations the objects of which have been the perpetual formations of predatory and intestine wars ? What, but similar considerations, could prevail on the government of the same country, even in these days, to patronize a commerce for diametrically opposite to the generally received maxims of that