I was to pass, I was desired by several of my friends to change my name. To
this I could not consent; and, on consulting the committee, they were
decidedly against it.

I was introduced as quickly as possible, on my arrival at Paris, to the
friends of the cause there, to the Duke de la Rochefoucald, the Marquis de
Condorcet, Messieurs Petion de Villeneuve, Claviere, and Brissot, and to
the Marquis de la Fayette. The latter received me with peculiar marks of
attention. He had long felt for the wrongs of Africa, and had done much to
prevent them. He had a plantation in Cayenne, and had devised a plan, by
which the labourers upon it should pass by degrees from slavery to freedom.
With this view he had there laid it down as a principle, that all crimes
were equal, whether they were committed by Blacks or Whites, and ought
equally to be punished. As the human mind is of such a nature, as to be
acted upon by rewards as well as punishments, he thought it unreasonable,
that the slaves should have no advantage from a stimulus from the former.
He laid it down therefore as another principle, that temporal profits
should follow virtuous action. To this he subjoined a reasonable education
to be gradually given. By introducing such principles, and by making
various regulations for the protection and comforts of the slaves, he
thought he could prove to the planters, that there was no necessity for the
Slave-trade; that the slaves upon all their estates would increase
sufficiently by population; that they might be introduced gradually, and
without detriment, to a state of freedom; and that then the real interests
of all would be most promoted. This system he had begun to act upon two
years before I saw him. He had also, when the society was established in
Paris, which took the name of The Friends of the Negros, enrolled himself a
member of it.

The first public steps taken after my arrival in Paris were at a committee