Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/218

204 Pelletan, in his Memoirs of the French Colony of Senegal, says, "The negroes work with ardor, because they are now unmolested in their possessions and enjoyments. Since the suppression of slavery, the Moors make no more inroads upon them, and their villages are rebuilt and re-peopled." Bosman, who was by no means very friendly to colored people, says: "The negroes of Cabomonte and Juido, are indefatigable cultivators, economical of their soil, they scarcely leave a foot-path to form a communication between the different possessions; they reap one day, and the next they sow the same earth, without allowing it time for repose."

It is needless to multiply quotations; for the concurrent testimony of all travellers proves that industry is a common virtue in the interior of Africa. Again, it is said that the negroes are treacherous, cunning, dishonest, and profligate. Let me ask you, candid reader, what you would be, if you labored under the same unnatural circumstances? The daily earnings of the slave, nay, his very wife and children, are constantly wrested from him, under the sanction of the laws; is this the way to teach a scrupulous regard to the property of others? How can purity be expected from him, who sees almost universal licentiousness prevail among those whom he is taught to regard as his superiors? Besides, we must remember how entirely unprotected the negro is in his domestic relations, and how very frequently husband and wife are separated by the caprice, or avarice, of the white man. I have no doubt that slaves are artful; for they must be so. Cunning is always the resort of the weak against the strong; children, who have violent and unreasonable parents, become deceitful in self-defence.

The only way to make young people sincere and frank, is to treat them with mildness and perfect justice. The negro often pretends to be ill in order to avoid labor; and if you were situated as he is, you would do the same. But it is said that the blacks are malignant and revengeful. Granting it to be true,—is it their faulty or is it owing to the cruel circumstances in which they are placed? Surely there are proofs enough that they are naturally a kind and gentle people. True, they do