the colonies, would be open to this view of the subject as their clear
and indispensable duty."

Having led the reader to the first necessary step to be taken in favour
of our slaves in the British Colonies,--namely, the procuring for them a
new and better code of laws; and having since led him to the last or
final one,--namely, the procuring for them the rights of which they have
been unjustly deprived: I shall now confine myself entirely to this
latter branch of the subject, being assured, that it has a claim to all
the attention that can be bestowed upon it; and I trust that I shall be
able to show, by appealing to historical facts, that however awful and
tremendous the work of _emancipation_ may seem, it is yet _practicable_;
that it is practicable also _without danger_; and moreover, that it is
practicable with the probability of _advantage_ to all the parties
concerned.

In appealing however to facts for this purpose, we must expect no light
from antiquity to guide us on our way; for history gives us no account
of persons in those times similarly situated with the slaves in the
British colonies at the present day. There were no particular nations in
those times, like the Africans, expressly set apart for slavery by the
rest of the world, so as to have a stigma put upon them on that account,
nor did a difference of the colour of the skin constitute always, as it
now does, a most marked distinction between the master and the slave, so
as to increase this stigma and to perpetuate antipathies between them.
Nor did the slaves of antiquity, except perhaps once in Sparta, form the
whole labouring population of the land; nor did they work incessantly,
like the Africans, under the whip; nor were they generally so behind
their masters in cultivated intellect. Neither does ancient history give
us in the cases of manumission, which it records, any parallel, from