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    negroes in the state of New York , that I have known a person who had resided long in the West Indies , stare with astonishment on first beholding the free negroes , who fill the offices of cooks , stewards , and servants on board the American vessels , which frequent the London and Liverpool docks . Some of them , ' he

    remarked , ' talk like white people , and look like them in all but their wool , and the colour of their skins . ' It is an undoubted fact , that many negroes might be produced superior to many whites in their power of intellect and physical organization ; but it will be found , upon examination , that the negroes have been selected from the finest specimens of their race , and the whites from an inferior portion .

    The proposition to keep up negro slavery for the sake of procuring sugar cheap—a very questionable matter—and of keeping up our shipping and commerce , is so monstrous , that it cannot be for a moment entertained by any one whose mind is swayed by the principles of justice ; it would be seeking a small utility by the perpetration of a monstrous wrong , pregnant with evils far more

    enduring than the temporary loss of sugar or commerce , even supposing such to be the result . But such would not be the case . West India sugars are only kept in the market by high duties levied upon other sugars ; and even though the East India and Brazil sugars be of inferior strength , that is probably only the result of inferior manufacture ; and it must be remarked , that that

    very fact of inferior strength makes the duty still higher , just as a duty of ten shillings per gallon upon alcohol ten per cent , under proof , would be a heavier rate than the same amount per gallon levied on alchohol ten per cent , above proof . Leave the trade free , and it is probable that East India and Brazil sugar would

    put West India sugar out of the market ; and if it be alleged that an improvement might take place in the West India growth and manufacture , there is still the same argument to be applied to the other sugars . If England has excelled in calicoes and silks , on account of the rude state of skill and mechanism in India , it

    is most probable that the manufacture of sugar may be quite as rude , and Brazil is certainly not the country where the arts have as yet been carried to the greatest pitch of perfection . Now , would not the commerce of Brazil and India afford as much employment for shipping as the commerce of the West Indies ? But it would scarcely be a moral thing to purchase the slave-made sugar of Brazil or any other country , after refusing the slave-made

    sugar of the West Indies . It would be far more desirable to cultivate beets , even though they might yield a worse article , t . e . supposing the free-labour East India sugar did not suffice . The slavery must be abolished , that is beyond doubt ; it is a sine qua non ; but if it can be shown that extending the manumission of the slaves over a term of five or six years , so that all might not be turned loose in a single day , but that they mi g ht gradually be

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    A bolition of Negro Slavery . 465

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 465, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/25/