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APPENDIX B.
(_Page_ 312.)
Johnson's sentiments towards his fellow-subjects in America have never,
so far as I know, been rightly stated. It was not because they fought
for liberty that he had come to dislike them. A man who, 'bursting forth
with a generous indignation, had said:--"The Irish are in a most
unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the
majority"' (_ante_, ii. 255), was not likely to wish that our
plantations should be tyrannically governed. The man who, 'in company
with some very grave men at Oxford, gave as his toast, "Here's to the
next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies"' (_post_, iii.
200), was not likely to condemn insurrections in general. The key to his
feelings is found in his indignant cry, 'How is it that we hear the
loudest _yelps_ for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' (_Ib_) He
hated slavery as perhaps no man of his time hated it. While the Quakers,
who were almost the pioneers in the Anti-slavery cause, were still
slave-holders and slave-dealers, he lifted up his voice against it. So
early as 1740, when Washington was but a child of eight, he had
maintained 'the natural right of the negroes to liberty and
independence.' (_Works_, vi. 313.) In 1756 he described Jamaica as 'a
place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants and a
dungeon of slaves.' (_Ib_ vi. 130.) In 1759 he wrote:--'Of black men the
numbers are too great who are now repining under English cruelty.' (_Ib_
iv. 407.) In the same year, in describing the cruelty of the Portuguese
discoverers, he said:--'We are openly told that they had the less
scruple concerning their treatment of the savage people, because they
scarcely considered them as distinct from beasts; and indeed, the
practice of all the European nations, and among others of the _English
barbarians that cultivate the southern islands of America_, proves that
this opinion, however absurd and foolish, however wicked and injurious,
still continues to prevail. Interest and pride harden the heart, and it
is in vain to dispute against avarice and power.' (_Ib_ v. 218.) No
miserable sophistry could convince him, with his clear mind and his
ardour for liberty, that slavery can be right. 'An individual,' he wrote
(_post_, iii. 202), 'may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he
cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.' How deeply he
felt for the wrongs done to helpless races is shown in his dread of
discoverers. No man had a more eager curiosity, or more longed that the
bounds of knowledge should be enlarged. Yet he wrote:--'I do not much
wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in
conquest and robbery.' (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 248.) In his _Life of
Savage_, written in 1744, he said (_Works_, viii. 156):--'Savage has not
forgotten ... to censure those crimes which have been generally
committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous
wickedness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot
resist, and of invading countries because they are fruitful.... He has
asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress
that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence
of power.' He loved the University of Salamanca, because it gave it as
its opinion that the conquest of America by the Spaniards was not lawful
(_ante_, i. 455). When, in 1756, the English and French were at war in
America, he said that 'such was the contest that no honest man could
heartily wish success to either party.... It was only the quarrel of two
robbers for the spoils of a passenger' (_ante_, i. 308, note 2). When,
from political considerations, opposition was raised in 1766 to the
scheme of translating the Bible into Erse, he wrote:--'To omit for a
year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing
Christianity, in compliance with any purposes that terminate on this
side of the grave, is a crime of which I know not that the world has yet
had an example, except in the practice of the planters of America--a
race of mortals whom, I suppose, no other man wishes to resemble'
(_ante_, ii. 27). Englishmen, as a nation, had no right to reproach
their fellow-subjects in America with being drivers of negroes; for
England shared in the guilt and the gain of that infamous traffic. Nay,
even as the Virginian delegates to Congress in 1774 complained:--'Our
repeated attempts to exclude all further importations of slaves from
Africa by prohibition, and by imposing duties which might amount to
prohibition, have hitherto been defeated by his Majesty's negative--thus
preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the
lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human
nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' Bright's _Speeches_,
ed. 1869, i. 171. Franklin (_Memoirs_, ed. 1818, iii. 17), writing from
London in 1772, speaks of 'the hypocrisy of this country, which
encourages such a detestable commerce by laws for promoting the Guinea
trade; while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the
equity of its courts in setting free a single negro.' From the slightest
stain of this hypocrisy Johnson was free. He, at all events, had a right
to protest against 'the yelps' of those who, while they solemnly
asserted that among the unalienable rights of all men are liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, yet themselves were drivers of negroes.