This softness may be collected almost every where from the
Travels of Mr. Mungo Park, and has been noticed by other writers, who
have contrasted it with the unbending ferocity of the North American
Indians and other tribes. But if this be a feature in the African
character, we may account for the uniformity of the conduct of those
Africans, who were liberated on the several occasions above mentioned,
or for their yielding so uniformly to the impressions, which had been
given them by their superiors, after they had been made free; and, if
this be so, why should not our colonial slaves, if emancipated, conduct
themselves in the same manner? Besides, I am not sure whether the good
conduct of the liberated in these cases was not to be attributed in part
to a sense of interest, when they came to know, that their condition
_was to be improved_. Self-interest is a leading principle with all who
are born into the world; and why is the Negro slave in our colonies to
be shut out from this common feeling of our nature?--why is he to rise
against his master, when he is informed that his condition is to be
bettered? Did not the planters, as I have before related, declare in the
House of Commons in the year 1816, that their Negroes had then imbibed
the idea that they were to be made free, and that they were _extremely
restless on that account_? But what was the cause of all this
restlessness? Why, undoubtedly the thought of their emancipation was so
interesting, or rather a matter of such exceedingly great joy to them,
that _they could not help thinking and talking of it_.
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