- YET, planter, let humanity prevail.1—
- Perhaps thy Negroe, in his native land,
- Possest large fertile plains, and slaves, and herds:2
- Perhaps, whene’er he deign’d to walk abroad,
- The richest silks, from where the Indus3 rolls, [215]
- His limbs invested in their gorgeous pleats:
- Perhaps he wails his wife, his children, left
- To struggle with adversity: Perhaps
- Fortune, in battle for his country fought,
- Gave him a captive to his deadliest foe: [220]
- Perhaps, incautious, in his native fields,
- (On pleasurable scenes his mind intent)
- All as he wandered; from the neighbouring grove,
- Fell ambush dragg’d him to the hated main.—
- Were they even sold for crimes; ye polish’d, say! [225]
- Ye, to whom Learning opes her amplest page!
- Ye, whom the knowledge of a living God
- Should lead to virtue! Are ye free from crimes?
- Ah pity, then, these uninstructed swains;
- And still let mercy soften the decrees [230]
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Of rigid justice, with her lenient hand.
- OH, did the tender muse possess the power,4
- Which monarchs have, and monarchs oft abuse:
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From here to the end of The Sugar-Cane, Grainger settles on a strategy of amelioration for dealing with the problem of slavery. This strategy involves accepting the continuation of slavery as an institution but advocating for the humane treatment of the enslaved as an economically prudent measure. Note that his recommendations mirror the actions of Montano at the end of Book I. ↩︎
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Slavery did exist in Africa, although it is clear that the Atlantic slave trade fundamentally altered how it was practiced and the number of people who experienced enslavement. Grainger’s reference to slavery in Africa is a conventional move of pro-slavery writers, who invoked it in an attempt to justify and excuse slavery in American plantations. ↩︎
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Indus, a river in southern Asia, rising in the Kailas mountain range in Tibet and flowing through India and Pakistan. ↩︎
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In this stanza, Grainger claims that he would abolish slavery if his poetry had the power to do so. The next ten lines contain the only explicitly abolitionist sentiments in the poem and would be quoted positively in later abolitionist tracts. See, for example, Nathaniel Appleton’s 1767 Considerations on Slavery (15-16). ↩︎