Why must I Afric's sable children see
Vended for slaves, though born by nature free,
The nameless tortures cruel minds invent
Those to subject whom Nature equal meant?
If these you dare (although unjust success
Empowers you now unpunished, to oppress),
Revolving empire you and yours may doom--
(Rome all subdu'd--yet Vandals vanquish'd Rome)
Yes--Empire may revolt--give them the day,
And yoke may yoke, and blood may blood repay.


Wallis, in his _System of the Laws of Scotland_, maintains, that
"neither men nor governments have a right to sell those of their own
species. Men and their liberty are neither purchaseable nor saleable."
And, after arguing the case, he says, "This is the law of nature, which
is obligatory on all men, at all times, and in all places.--Would not
any of us, who should be snatched by pirates from his native land, think
himself cruelly abused, and at all times entitled to be free? Have not
these unfortunate Africans, who meet with the same cruel fate, the same
right? Are they not men as well as we? And have they not the same
sensibility? Let us not, therefore, defend or support an usage, which is
contrary to all the laws of humanity."

In the year 1750, the reverend Griffith Hughes, rector of St. Lucy, in
Barbados, published his Natural History of that island. He took an
opportunity, in the course of it, of laying open to the world the
miserable situation of the poor Africans, and the waste of them by hard
labour and other cruel means, and he had the generosity to vindicate
their capacities from the charge, which they who held them in bondage