"Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that nature has been less bountiful to them [the blacks] in the endowment of the head, I believe than in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favor no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are merely arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed, should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new nor peculiar to the color of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago."
P.149-150, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA by Thomas Jefferson, "Query XIV" ( Penguin Classics, London: 1785, 1999)
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Thomas Jefferson's conjecture.....
"Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that nature has been less bountiful to them [the blacks] in the endowment of the head, I believe than in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favor no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right: that, without this, they are merely arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed, should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new nor peculiar to the color of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago."
P.149-150, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA by Thomas Jefferson, "Query XIV" ( Penguin Classics, London: 1785, 1999)