Count Constantine

"Just think," [Count Constantine] de Volney declared incredulously, "that this race of Black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of people who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery, and questioned whether Black men have the same kind of intelligence as whites!

source: M. Constantine de Volney, Travels through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785 (London: 1787), p. 80-83.

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