Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/114

100 In those countries where the slave codes are mild, where emancipation is rendered easy, and inducements are offered to industry, insurrections are not feared, and free people of color form a valuable portion of the community. If we persist in acting in opposition to the established laws of nature and reason, how can we expect favorable results? But it is pronounced unsafe to change our policy. Every progressive improvement in the world has been resisted by despotism, on the ground that changes were dangerous. The Emperor of Austria thinks there is need of keeping his subjects ignorant, that good order may be preserved. But what he calls good order, is sacrificing the happiness of many to the advancement of a few; and no doubt knowledge is unfavorable to the continuation of such a state of things. It is precisely so with the slave holder; he insists that the welfare of millions must be subordinate to his private interest, or else all good order is destroyed.

It is much to be regretted that Washington enfranchised his slaves in the manner he did; because their poverty and indolence have furnished an ever ready argument for those who are opposed to emancipation. To turn slaves adrift in their old age, unaccustomed to take care of themselves, without employment, and in a community where all the prejudices were strongly arrayed against free negroes, was certainly an unhappy experiment.

But if slaves were allowed to redeem themselves progressively, by purchasing one day of the week after another, as they can in the Spanish colonies, habits of