were sufficiently extensive to drain Africa, in ten years, the race of negroes would be extinct!* The East is more involved in darkness: and perhaps it is more honourable to humanity, and to the honourable East India Company, that this history should never be written nor mentioned.

Help me bless God, my dear fellow, that the United States are not within the influence of this Upas; and that we are nationally guilty of but one enormity, I mean the toleration of slavery.

Oh heaven! Is it possible that in the United States, a country, where triumph the purest principles of legislation which ever adorned civil society; a country, in which the human character is already elevated to a superior species of man, compared with the miserable wretches of Europe; a country, whose present principles, tested by its present conduct, are to influence future ages, and perhaps sanction the basest crimes; is it possible that in such a country, you can find a "Slave to be sold?" What abominable impudence! What unheard of inconsistency! Let other people, who do not acknowledge our feelings and our principles, enslave and be enslaved. Europe is not inconsistent! she never

*It has been ascertained that the West India planters are obliged to import annually at the rate of ten per cent on their stock. I submit this to Lord Thurlow.

acknowledged the rights of man.

Yet in England,

a country whose oppressions have travelled with the revolution of the globe, have explored new oceans, and have extended to the four quarters of the world, a negro is as free as a Briton! I blush for my country; and I have been made, by Englishmen, to blush for my country!

LETTER XXV.

LONDON, APRIL 22d.

THE South of Europe has long been accustomed to call the English, barbarians. The weaker character, which suffers from the stronger, is readily disposed to strong epithets. The degenerate Greeks termed the Romans, barbarians.-A nation of slaves will always be inclined to consider their neighbours, barbarous, in the degree they approach natural freedom. This opinion of foreigners ought to flatter the English; they would be little disposed to become like their neighbours, in order to be more civilized.

That people, whoever they may be, who, for a thousand years, have neither changed their constitution of government, nor their religion, nor suffered the forcible and infectious intercourse of foreigners, but whose laws, customs, manners and sentiments, kindly bending with time and circumstance, are nothing more than emanations from the spirit of their government, will regard the English, who possess a character so different from themselves, as a monstrous sort of people.

However, it must be conceded, foreigners have some little colour for, their opinion, though they are not sufficiently candid to inquire the reason, The English have been so frequently bandied about, within a thousand years, and suffered so many modifications, that one part of their character is at least two centuries behind the other. This will ever be the case, where the original stock of a nation, like the English, has suffered so many ingraftings and revolutions. That laws, customs and manners keep pace with civilization, it is necessary the people should preserve their principles and their individuality, and be neither retarded nor impelled in their career. But if a people be not originally free, when they enter the social confederacy, those checks, which they may receive, and those foreign inroads, which will partially destroy their inviduality, are as likely to benefit, as to injure.

The English, you very well know, have been peculiarly subject to those impressions, which revolutions leave behind; and no revolution can happen without impelling the worst passions into action, and transmitting them to posterity.

This people, within the notices of history, were little better, than savages. Propitious events have terminated in comparative freedom: but these events, not always happening at that period of their civiliza

tion most conducive to their advantage, have rendered the English the most complex characters in Europe. I will instance.

From the moment Magna Charta was signed, the English fancied themselves free: the nobles, indeed, attained their object. The people also were proclaimed free: but they had not more of the spirit of freemen, than the slave who rests on his spade and listens to the song of liberty. They were not then ready for freedom. The event of the revolution of 1688, was the best constitution of government, which modern Europe, which perhaps the world had ever witnessed. The English were then free unfortunately their freedom came too late. Liberty, for the first time, found herself seated on the couch of commerce! The consequence might have been foreseen: an evil has grown up with the English constitution, which has long since proved its ruin.

There is but one period, allotted to any people, in which they can establish their freedom. Prior to this period, they are too barbarous posterior to this period, they are too civilized. The Romans, under the auspices of Lucius Junius Brutus, seized the happy moment. In process of time, they gradually lost their liberty; yet they knew not precisely how, nor when but lost, it certainly was, in the days of

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