Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/100

86 it. There is genuine wisdom in the following remark, extracted from the petition of Cambridge University to the Parliament of England, on the subject of slavery: "A firm belief in the Providence of a benevolent Creator assures us that no system, founded on the oppression of one part of mankind, can be beneficial to another."

But the tolerator of slavery will say, "No doubt the system is an evil; but we are not to blame for it; we received it from our English ancestors. It is a lamentable necessity;—we cannot do it away if we would;—insurrections would be the inevitable result of any attempt to remove it"—and having quieted their consciences by the use of the word lamentable, they think no more upon the subject.

These assertions have been so often, and so dogmatically repeated, that many truly kind-hearted people have believed there was some truth in them. I myself, (may God forgive me for it!) have often, in thoughtless ignorance, made the same remarks.

An impartial and careful examination has led me to the conviction that slavery causes insurrections, while emancipation prevents them.

The grand argument of the slave holder is that sudden freedom occasioned the horrible massacres of St Domingo.—If a word is said in favor of abolition, he shakes his head, and points a warning finger to St Domingo! But it is a remarkable fact that this same vilified island furnishes a strong argument against the lamentable necessity of slavery. In the first place, there was a bloody civil war there before the act of emancipation was passed; in the second place enfranchisement produced the most blessed effects; in the third place, no difficulties whatever arose, until Bonaparte made his atrocious attempt to restore slavery in the island.

Colonel Malenfant, a slave proprietor, resident in St Domingo at the time, thus describes the effect of sudden enfranchisement, in his Historical and Political Memoir of the Colonies:

"After this public act of emancipation, the negroes remained quiet both in the south and in the west, and they continued to work upon all the plantations. There were