To begin with the first. In the Memoirs of
Granville Sharp, lately published, there is an anecdote recorded
of the young Prince Naimbanna, well worthy the attention of all
unfledged sophists, and embryo politicians.
'The name of a person having been
mentioned in his presence, who was understood by him to have publicly
asserted something very degrading to the general character of
Africans, he broke out into violent and vindictive language. He
was immediately reminded of the Christian duty of forgiving his
enemies; upon which he answered nearly in the following words:
- "If a man should rob me of my money, I can forgive him;
if a man should shoot at me, or try to stab me, I can forgive
him; if a man should sell me and all my family to a slave-ship,
so that we should pass all the rest of our days in slavery in
the West Indies, I can forgive him; but" ( added he, rising
from his seat with much emotion) "if a man takes away the
character of the people of my country, I never can forgive him."
Being asked, why he would not extend his forgiveness to those
who took away the character of the people of this country, he
answered - " If a man should try to kill me, or should sell
me and my family for slaves, he would do an injury to as many
as he might kill or sell; but if any one takes away the character
of Black people, that man injures Black people all over the world;
and when he has once taken away their character, there is nothing
that he may not do to Black people ever after. That man, for instance,
will beat Black men, and say, Oh, it is only a Black man, why
should I not beat him? That man will make slaves of Black
people; for when he has taken away their character, he will say,
Oh, they are only Black people, why should I not make them
slaves? That man will take away all the people of Africa if
he can catch them; and if you ask him, But why do you take away
all these people? he will say Oh, they are only Black people
- why should I not take them? That is the reason why I cannot
forgive the man who takes away the character of the people of
my country," ' p. 369. - So we conceive, that if we take
away the character of the people of this country, of any large
proportion of them, there is no degree of turpitude or injustice
that we may not introduce into measures and treatment which we
consider as most fit for them. To legislate wisely, and for the
best, it is necessary that we should think as well, and not as
ill, as possible, of those for whom we legislate; or otherwise
we shall soon reduce them to the level of our own theories. To
treat men as brute beasts in our speculations, is to encourage
ourselves to treat them as such in our practice; and that is the
way to make them what we pretend to believe they are. To take
it for granted that any class of the community is utterly depraved
and incorrigible, is not the way either to improve our own treatment
of them, or to correct their vicious qualities. And when we see
the lower classes of the English people uniformly singled out
as marks for the malice or servility of a certain description
of writers -when we see them studiously separated, like a degraded
caste, from the rest of the community, with scarcely the
attributes and faculties of the species allowed them, - nay, when
they are thrust lower in the scale if humanity than the same classes
of any other nation in Europe - though it is to these very classes
that we owe the valour of our naval and military heroes, the industry
of our artisans and labouring mechanics, and all that we have
been told, again and again, elevates us above every other nation
in Europe- when we see the redundant population ( as it
is fashionably called) selected as the butt for every effusion
of paltry spite, and as the last resource of vindictive penal
statues - when we see every existing evil derived from this unfortunate
race, and every possible vice ascribed to them - when we are accustomed
to hear the poor, the uninformed, the friendless, put, by tacit
consent, out of the pale of society - when their faults and wretchedness
are exaggerated with eager impatience, and still greater impatience
is shown at every expression of a wish to amend them - when they
are familiarly spoken of as a sort of vermin only fit to be hunted
down, and exterminated at the discretion of their betters: - we
know pretty well what to think, both of the disinterestedness
of the motives which give the currency to this jargon, and of
the wisdom of the policy which should either sanction, or suffer
itself to be influenced by its suggestions.
From 'Capital Punishments' in the
Edinburgh Review ( July 1821)
*Taken from William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, edited by Ronald Blythe, Penguin, 1970.