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vi PREFACE
gained money sufficient for his own ransom, purchased with it his mother's freedom.  The most horrible outrage that can be committed against a negro,is to curse his father or his mother, or to speak of either with contempt.
"Mungo Park observes, that a slave said to his master, 'Strike me, but curse not my mother.'  And that a negress having lost her son, her only consolation was, that he had never told a lie.  Casuaux relates that a negro, seeing a white man abuse his father, said, 'Carry away the child of this monster, that it may not learn to imitate his conduct.'
"The Bishop Jacquemin had been twenty-two years at Guiana, where he was much beloved.  When they ceased to employ him as a pastor, those Indians said to him, 'Father, thou art aged: remain with us, and we will hunt and fish for thee.'
"Many others might be added from the official depositions made at the bar of Parliament, and before the select committee of the House of Commons, in England, in 1790 and 1791; but these may suffice to encourage others to similar acts of piety and filial affection, remembering also that we must expect our children to follow our example.
"As no human being can choose the place of his birth or the advantages of ancestry, so it manifest great folly to build our fame on the virtues, riches, or honors of those who have gone before us, or to despise a fellow-being on account of the poverty or obscurity of his birth.  In so doing, we arraign the goodness of our Creator, and act inconsistently with our dependent situation."
PART 1.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES,
&c.
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FRANCIS WILLIAMS,
The son of African parents, was born in Jamica, about the year 1700, and died when about seventy years of age.  Struck with the conspicuous talents of this negro, when he was guite young, the Duke of Montague, governor of the island, proposed to try whether, by an improved education, he would be equal to a white placed in the same circumstances.  
2.  He accordingly sent him to England, where he commenced his studies in a private school; and he afterward entered the University of Cambridge, where he made considerable progress in mathematics, and other branches of science.
3.  After several years' stay in England, he returned to Jamaica, where, under the patronage of the governor, he opened a school, and taught