He contended, that the Africans ought to be better
treated, and to be raised to a better condition; and he ridiculed the
inconsistency of those who held them in bondage. "It affords," says he, "a
curious spectacle to observe that the same people, who talk in a high
strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing
their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no
scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow-creatures into
circumstances, by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost
of every species of right. Fortune perhaps never produced a situation more
calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the
conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles."
It is a great honour to the university of Glasgow, that it should have
produced, before any public agitation of this question, three
professors[A], all of whom bore their public testimony against the
continuance of the cruel trade.
[Footnote A: The other was professor Hutcheson, before mentioned in p.
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