Pitt; and upon this principle, that it might be as
dangerous to give freedom at once to a man used to slavery, as, in the case
of a man who had never seen day-light, to expose him all at once to the
full glare of a meridian sun.
With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was pride
only, which suggested a difference between them and ourselves. There was a
remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which he would quote.
In one of the slave-ships was a person of consequence; a man, once high in
a military station, and with a mind not insensible to the eminence of his
rank. He had been taken captive and sold; and was then in the hold,
confined promiscuously with the rest. Happening in the night to fall
asleep, he dreamed that he was in his own country; high in honour and
command; caressed by his family and friends; waited on by his domestics;
and surrounded with all his former comforts in life. But awaking suddenly,
and finding where he was, he was heard to burst into the loudest groans and
lamentations on the miserable contrast of his present state; mixed with the
meanest of his subjects; and subjected to the insolence of wretches a
thousand times lower than himself in every kind of endowment.
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