Note 9 — THE ANTISLAVERY ENTERPRISE:

By the Rev. Thomas Thompson, Vicar of Reculver, in Kent, and printed at Canterbury in 1772. Boswell’s defence of the Slave-Trade was kindred in character. (Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, London, 1848, Vol. VII. pp. 23, 24, Sept. 23, 1777.) Nothing can be more melancholy than the effort of Capitein the African, who, surrendering to the Dutch influences about him, made himself the apologist of Slavery, in a Latin Dissertation, translated into Dutch, and reprinted four times, entitled “Dissertatio politico-theologica de Servitute Libertati Christianæ non contraria, quam sub Præside J. Van den Honert publicæ Disquisitioni subjicit J. E. J. Capitein, Afer, in 4to, Lugduni Batavorum, 1742.” In our own country, the Rev. John Beck, of Georgia, dared to preach and print, in 1801, two sermons entitled “The Doctrine of Perpetual Bondage reconcilable with the Infinite Justice of God, a Truth plainly asserted in the Jewish and Christian Scripture.” Good men must join in the thanks expressed to Colonel Humphreys by the philanthropist Grégoire, for his exposure of this baseness in his Valedictory Discourse before the Cincinnati of Connecticut. Grégoire, De la Littérature des Nègres, p. 232.