This virtuous statesman, after having given his
estimate of the population and revenue of the French West Indian
colonies, proceeds thus:--"The colonies of France contain, as we have
seen, near five hundred thousand slaves, and it is from the number of
these poor wretches that the inhabitants set a value on their
plantations. What a dreadful prospect! and how profound a subject for
reflection! Alas! how little are we both in our morality and our
principles! We preach up humanity, and yet go every year to bind in
chains twenty thousand natives of Africa! We call the Moors barbarians
and ruffians, because they attack the liberty of Europeans at the risk
of their own; yet these Europeans go, without danger, and as mere
speculators, to purchase slaves by gratifying the avarice of their
masters, and excite all those bloody scenes which are the usual
preliminaries of this traffic!" He goes on still further in the same
strain. He then shows the kind of power which has supported this
execrable trade. He throws out the idea of a general compact, by which
all the European nations should agree to abolish it; and he indulges the
pleasing hope that it may take place even in the present generation.
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