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besides these two ways by which slaves are acquired, they may also be hereditary; “servi nascuntur;” the children of acquired slaves are, “jure naturæ,” by a negative kind of birthright, slaves also.—But this, being built on the two former rights, must fall together with them. If neither captivity, nor the sale of one’s self, can by the law of nature and reason reduce the parent to slavery, much less can they reduce the offspring.” Thus by the most clear, manly, and convincing reasoning does this excellent author refute every claim upon which the practice of slavery is founded, or by which it has been supposed to be justified, at least, in modern times.[1] But were we even to admit, that a captive taken in a just war, might by his conqueror be reduced to a state of slavery, this could not justify the claim of Europeans to reduce the natives of Africa to that state: it is a melancholy, though well-known fact, that in order to furnish supplies of these unhappy people for the purposes of the slave trade, the Europeans have constantly, by the most insidious (I had almost said infernal) arts, fomented
- ↑ These arguments are, in fact, borrowed from the Spirit of Laws.
