light. "There is not a Negro from the coast of Africa, who does not, in
this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity, which the soul of his sordid
master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted
more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations
of heroes to the refuse of the gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the
virtue neither of the countries they came from, nor of those they go to,
and whose levity, brutality, and baseness so justly expose them to the
contempt of the vanquished." And now, in 1770, in his Wealth of Nations, he
showed in a forcible manner (for he appealed to the interest of those
concerned) the dearness of African labour, or the impolicy of employing
slaves.

Professor Millar, in his Origin of Ranks, followed Dr. Smith on the same
ground. He explained the impolicy of slavery in general, by its bad effects
upon industry, population, and morals. These effects he attached to the
system of agriculture as followed in our islands. He showed, besides, how
little pains were taken, or how few contrivances were thought of, to ease
the labourers there. He contended, that the Africans ought to be better
treated, and to be raised to a better condition; and he ridiculed the
inconsistency of those who held them in bondage. "It affords," says he, "a
curious spectacle to observe that the same people, who talk in a high
strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing
their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no
scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow-creatures into
circumstances, by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost
of every species of right. Fortune perhaps never produced a situation more
calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the
conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles."
It is a great honour to the university of Glasgow, that it should have
produced, before any public agitation of this question, three