On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    their resemblance to us , by a more opprobrious distinction . 77 »

    * £ he negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold ivhich polite nations so highly value . Can there be a greater proof of their wanting common sense ? It is impossible for us to suppose these crectures to be Tneny because * alloiuing tkern to be metiy a suspicion it / ould follow , that we ourselves are n . t

    christiunS-Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrongs done to the Africans . For , "were the case as they state it , would the European powers , who make so many needless conventions among themselves , have failed to make a general one in behalf of humanity and compassion , "

    To the passages quoted in the 4 Essay " and here printed in italics , ( p . 141 , note , ) are prefixed the following remarks . " The arguments advanced by

    Montesquieu , ( who it can scarcely be denied is as often wrong as he is right ) , are so ¦ weak , absurd and illiberal , that they only give validity to those which have been ably supported on the other side of the question . ' *

    After the quotation from Montesqureu , the note closes in the following manner . u Those who have even opposed the abolition of the slave-trade on any

    grounds , must peruse , with a mixture of horror and contempt , the above base and futile arguments- They dishonour the many as well as the authory and scarcely deserve an answer . ' * I am persuaded that every attentive reader ol 4 i the Essay on

    Untitled Article

    Government , '' must be surprised , that a person of such discriminating talents as the authoress of that work , possesses could fail to discern , even in her own partial quotation , the severe , though ironical , censure of negro slavery , conveyed in the language of

    Montesquieu . At the same time , it was scarcely justifiable to arraign the principles of a great writer , upon such a partial quotation , and without reference to book or chapter . I promise myself , that the ingenious Essayist will not fail to take an early opportunity , ( perhaps on occasion of a second edition of

    her work , ) to vindicate the author of '' The Spirit , of Laws / ' from an undesigned misrepresentation of his sentiments . Allow me to mention another advocate for " Abolition , ' ' who

    also , like Montesquieu , did homage to Liberty in 6 c a land of slaves / ' , I mean the French Minister , Turgot . In his life , published in 1786 , and attributed to Condorcet , we are informed , that as Minister of Marine , in

    1774 , among other liberal pro , - jeets , he devised the gradual abolition , not merely of the slave trade , but of negro-slavery , —the disgrace of modern nations . *

    In L 775 , when he had become Controller General , a merchant , to secure the minister ' s favour , desired to give his name to a vessel built for the African

    slarc-* " Accoutume des longtems a refiechir sur tons les objets de Teconomie polttique , il avoit vu avec quelJe facilite , en suivant de nouveaux prtneipes , en prenant la justice & la ) iberte pour base d * une nouvelle Administration , il pourroit produire une revolution dans le Commerce , detruire cette avidite tyrannicrue qui < ltsole l'Asie pour dv shonorer & corrompre PEurope , rendre nos Coionics libres 3 c puissantes . les attacher a la niere ~ pa . trie , non par leur foiblesse & la necessite * man par l'intcr £ t 3 c la reconnoissance , assurer enfin leur existence , aujourd'hu * hi pr&caire , en fuisant disparoitre peu a peu par des loix sages cet esclavage des Nejjres l ' opprobre ded nations modernes . " Vie de Monsieur Turgot , Load , 17 86 , p . 59-

    Untitled Article

    43 O Mans . Turgot , an Enemy to IXegYO-Qlaxtfit .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1809, page 430, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1739/page/16/