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[ 24 ] to be free? Have not these unfortunate Africans, who met with the fame cruel fate, the same right? Are not they men as well as we, and have they not the same sensibility? Let us not, therefore, defend or support a usage, which is contrary to all the laws of humanity.'

Francis Hutchison, also in his System of Moral Philosophy, speaking on the subject of Slavery, says, "He who detains another by force in slavery, is always bound to prove his title. The slave sold or carried away into a distant country, must not be obliged to prove a negative, That he never forfeited his Liberty. The violent possessor must, in all, cases, shew his title, especially where the old proprietor is well known. In this case each man is the original proprietor of his own Liberty: The proof of his loosing it must be incumbent on those, who deprived him of it by force. Strange, (says the same author) that in any nation, where a sense of Liberty prevails, where the Christian religion is professed, custom and high prospect of gain can so stupify the consciences of men, and all sense of natural justice, that they can hear such computation made about the value of their fellow-men and their liberty, without abhorence and indignation.'"

The noted Baron Montesquieu gives it, as his opinion, in his Spirit of Law, page 348, "That nothing more assimilates a man to a beast than living amongst freemen, himself a slave, such people as these are the natural enemies of society, and their number must always be dangerous.'"

The author of a pamphlet, lately printed in London, entituled, An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America, writes, That the bondage ' we