subordinates in the country, as the colored people, but the condition of
society _at the time_, would not admit of it. In the struggle for
American Independence, there were among those who performed the most
distinguished parts, the most common-place peasantry of the Provinces.
English, Danish, Irish, Scotch, and others, were among those whose names
blazoned forth as heroes in the American Revolution. But a single
reflection will convince us, that no course of policy could have induced
the proscription of the parentage and relatives of such men as Benjamin
Franklin the printer, Roger Sherman the cobbler, the tinkers, and others
of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. But as they were
determined to have a subservient class, it will readily be conceived,
that according to the state of society at the time, the better policy on
their part was, to select some class, who from their political
position--however much they may have contributed their aid as we
certainly did, in the general struggle for liberty by force of arms--who
had the least claims upon them, or who had the _least chance_, or was
the _least potent_ in urging their claims. This class of course was the
colored people and Indians.

The Indians who in the early settlement of the continent, before an
African captive had ever been introduced thereon, were reduced to the
most abject slavery, toiling day and night in the mines, under the
relentless hands of heartless Spanish taskmasters, but being a race of
people raised to the sports of fishing, the chase, and of war, were
wholly unaccustomed to labor, and therefore sunk under the insupportable
weight, two millions and a half having fallen victims to the cruelty of
oppression and toil suddenly placed upon their shoulders. And it was
only this that prevented their farther enslavement as a class, after the
provinces were absolved from the British Crown. It is true that their
general enslavement took place on the islands and in the mining