“We are told, Thirdly, that men may be _born slaves_, by being the children of slaves. But this being built upon the two former rights must fall together with them, if neither captivity, nor contract can by the plain law of nature and reason, reduce the parent to a state of slavery, much less can they reduce the offspring.” It clearly follows, that all slavery is as irreconcileable to justice as to mercy.
4. That slave-holding is utterly inconsistent with mercy, is almost too plain to need a proof. Indeed it is said, “That these negroes being prisoners of war, our captains and factors buy them, merely to save them from being put to death. And is not this mercy?” I answer, 1. Did Sir _John Hawkins_, and many others, seize upon men, women and children, who were at peace in their own fields and houses, merely to save them from death? 2. Was it to save them from death, that they knock’d out the brains of those they could not bring away? 3. Who occasioned and fomented those wars, wherein these poor creatures were taken prisoners? Who excited them by money, by drink, by every possible means, to fall upon one another? Was it not themselves? They know in their own conscience it was, if they have any conscience left. But 4. To bring the matter to a short issue. Can they say before God, That they ever took a single voyage, or bought a single negro from this motive? They cannot, they well know, to get money, not to save lives, was the whole and sole spring of their motions.
5. But if this manner of procuring and tearing negroes is not consistent either with mercy or justice, yet there is a plea for it which every man of business will acknowledge to be quite sufficient. Fifty years ago, one meeting an eminent statesman in the lobby of the House of Commons, said, “You have been long talking about justice and equity, Pray which is this bill? Equity or justice?” He answered, very short, and plain, “D--n justice: it is necessity.” Here also the slave-holder fixes his foot: here he rests the strength of his cause. “If it is not quite right, yet it _must_ be so: there is an absolute _necessity for it_. It is necessary we should procure slaves: and when we have procured them, it is necessary to use them with severity, considering their stupidity, stubbornness and wickedness.”
I answer, You stumble at the threshold: I deny that villany is ever necessary. It is impossible that it should ever be necessary, for any reasonable creature to violate all the laws of justice, mercy, and truth. No circumstances can make it necessary for a man to burst in sunder all the ties of humanity. It can never be necessary for a rational being to sink himself below a brute. A man can be under no necessity, of degrading himself into a wolf. The absurdity of the supposition is so glaring, that one would wonder any one could help seeing it.