with the same weapons; subject to the same diseases; healed by the same
means; warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a white man? if
you prick us, do we not bleed? if you poison us, do we not die? are we not
exposed to all the same wants? do we not feel all the same sentiments--are
we not capable of all the same exertions--and are we not entitled to all
the same rights, as other men?

Yes--and it is said we are men, it is true; but that we are men, addicted
to more and worse vices, than those of any other complexion; and such is
the innate perverseness of our minds, that nature seems to have marked us
out for slavery.--Such is the apology perpetually made for our masters, and
the justification offered for that universal proscription, under which we
labour.

But, I supplicate our enemies to be, though for the first time, just in
their proceedings toward us, and to establish the fact before, they attempt
to draw any conclusions from it. Nor let them imagine that this can be
done, by merely asserting that such is our universal character. It is
the character, I grant, that our inhuman masters have agreed to give us,
and which they have so industriously and too successfully propagated, in
order to palliate their own guilt, by blackening the helpless victims of
it, and to disguise their own cruelty under the semblance of justice. Let
the natural depravity of our character be proved--not by appealing to
declamatory invectives, and interested representations, but by showing that
a greater proportion of crimes have been committed by the wronged slaves of
the plantation, than by the luxurous inhabitants of Europe, who are happily
strangers to those aggravated provocations, by which our passions are every
day irritated and incensed. Show us, that, of the multitude of negroes, who
have within a few years transported themselves to this country,[8] and who
are abandoned to themselves; who are corrupted by example, prompted by