When the Negroes are considered barely in their present abject state of
slavery, broken-spirited and dejected; and too easy credit is given to
the accounts we frequently hear or read of their barbarous and savage
way of living in their own country; we shall be naturally induced to
look upon them as incapable of improvement, destitute, miserable, and
insensible of the benefits of life; and that our permitting them to live
amongst us, even on the most oppressive terms, is to them a favour. But,
on impartial enquiry, the case will appear to be far otherwise; we shall
find that there is scarce a country in the whole world, that is better
calculated for affording the necessary comforts of life to its
inhabitants, with less solicitude and toil, than Guinea. And that
notwithstanding the long converse of many of its inhabitants with
(often) the worst of the Europeans, they still retain a great deal of
innocent simplicity; and, when not stirred up to revenge from the
frequent abuses they have received from the Europeans in general,
manifest themselves to be a humane, sociable people, whose faculties are
as capable of improvement as those of other Men; and that their oeconomy
and government is, in many respects, commendable. Hence it appears they
might have lived happy, if not disturbed by the Europeans; more
especially, if these last had used such endeavours as their christian
profession requires, to communicate to the ignorant Africans that
superior knowledge which Providence had favoured them with. In order to
set this matter in its true light, and for the information of those
well-minded people who are desirous of being fully acquainted with the
merits of a cause, which is of the utmost consequence; as therein the
lives and happiness of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of our
fellow _Men_ have fallen, and are daily falling, a sacrifice to selfish
avarice and usurped power, I will here give some account of the several
divisions of those parts of Africa from whence the Negroes are brought,