In appealing however to facts for this purpose, we must expect no light
from antiquity to guide us on our way; for history gives us no account
of persons in those times similarly situated with the slaves in the
British colonies at the present day. There were no particular nations in
those times, like the Africans, expressly set apart for slavery by the
rest of the world, so as to have a stigma put upon them on that account,
nor did a difference of the colour of the skin constitute always, as it
now does, a most marked distinction between the master and the slave, so
as to increase this stigma and to perpetuate antipathies between them.
Nor did the slaves of antiquity, except perhaps once in Sparta, form the
whole labouring population of the land; nor did they work incessantly,
like the Africans, under the whip; nor were they generally so behind
their masters in cultivated intellect. Neither does ancient history give
us in the cases of manumission, which it records, any parallel, from
which we might argue in the case before us. The ancient manumissions
were those of individuals only, generally of but one at a time, and only
now and then; whereas the emancipation, which we contemplate in the
colonies, will comprehend _whole bodies of men_, nay, _whole
populations_, at a given time. We must go therefore in quest of examples
to modern times, or rather to the history of the colonial slavery
itself; and if we should find any there, which appear to bear at all
upon the case in question, we must be thankful for them, and, though
they should not be entirely to our mind, we must not turn them away, but
keep them, and reason from them as far as their analogies will warrant.
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