Page:A dissertation on slavery - with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it, in the state of Virginia. (IA dissertationonsl00tuckrich).pdf/15

 quarter of the globe, are too few to throw a satisfactory light on the subject. Suffice it that our ancestors migrating hither brought not with them any prototype of that slavery which hath been established among us. The first introduction of it into Virginia was by the arrival of a Dutch ship from the coast of Africa having twenty Negroes on board, who were sold here in the year 1620. In the year 1638 we find them in Massachusetts. They were introduced into Connecticut soon after the settlement of that colony; that is to say, about the same period. Thus early had our forefathers sown the seeds of an evil, which, like a leprosy, hath descended upon their posterity with accumulated rancour, visiting the sins of the fathers upon succeeding generations.—The climate of the northern states less favourable to the constitution of the natives of Africa, than the southern, proved alike unfavourable to their propagation, and to the increase of their numbers by importations. As the southern colonies advanced in population, not only importations increased there, but Nature herself, under a climate more congenial to the African constitution,