Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/119

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Most of the imported negroes are sent to the mines to replace those who have fallen victims to their insalubrious atmosphere; many of them die shortly after their arrival, from change of climate and food, and a few from mental despondency, which is here degraded by the name of sulkiness. Arguing from the experience of two centuries, we shall be almost induced to adopt the opinion of Voltaire, that a physical cause can alone produce so extraordinary an effect, as an immense tribe kept in a state of the most abject slavery by a handful of foreigners, not amounting to the tenth part of their own numbers. All the false reasoning upon this subject may be deduced from this fallacious maxim "that to judge correctly of the feelings of others, we should suppose ourselves in

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