A general wild offer of liberty would not
always be accepted. History furnishes few instances of it. It is sometimes as
hard to persuade slaves [Footnote: 36] to be free, as it is to compel freemen to
be slaves; and in this auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing
tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, do we not
perceive that the American master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in
defence of freedom?--a measure to which other people have had recourse more than
once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of their affairs.
Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from
slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very
nation which has sold them to their present masters?--from that nation, one of
whose causes of quarrel [Footnote: 37] with those masters is their refusal to
deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom from England would
come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel which is refused an
entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina with a cargo of three hundred
Angola negroes.
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