A Teacher and a Friend

In his 2007 book, Head and Heart, Garry Wills called Anthony Benezet “the one unquestionably authentic American saint.” More than 200 years earlier, French revolutionary Jacques Pierre Brissot wrote, “Who is equal to Benezet?

加里·威尔斯 (Garry Wills) 在其 2007 年出版的《头脑与心灵》一书中称安东尼·贝内泽为“毫无疑问的真正的美国圣人”。 200多年前，法国革命家雅克·皮埃尔·布里索写道：“谁能与贝内泽相媲美？

Who was more virtuous than Benezet?

谁比贝内泽更有道德？

Who was more useful to society, to mankind?” Benezet, an 18th-century Philadelphia Quaker, was instrumental in ending the transatlantic slave trade.

谁对社会、对人类更有用？”贝尼泽是 18 世纪的费城贵格会教徒，在结束跨大西洋奴隶贸易方面发挥了重要作用。

It was Benezet, too, who precipitated America’s long national discussion of Black and white equality, an unthinkable concept in his day.

也是贝内泽促成了美国关于黑人和白人平等的长期全国性讨论，这在他那个时代是一个不可想象的概念。

He was a person of not only national but global importance.

他不仅是一个对国家而且对全球都具有重要意义的人物。

Yet astonishingly, he has almost entirely slipped out of the American historical memory.

然而令人惊讶的是，他几乎完全从美国的历史记忆中消失了。

Today, this man, who did so much to trigger America’s abolitionist movement and England’s as well, is known mainly to a small circle of scholars.

今天，这个为引发美国和英国废奴运动作出巨大贡献的人，主要为一小群学者所熟知。

Philadelphia’s Quakers had started brooding about slavery in 1688, seven years after William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania.

1688 年，即威廉·佩恩 (William Penn) 创建宾夕法尼亚殖民地七年后，费城的贵格会教徒开始思考奴隶制问题。

A group of Friends in nearby Germantown had issued a remonstrance that made its way to the Quakers’ highest colonial authority.

附近日耳曼敦的一群朋友向贵格会最高殖民当局发出了抗议。

“We are,” the Germantown Friends declared, “against the traffic of men-body …

“我们，”日耳曼敦之友宣称，“反对男性身体的流动......

To bring men hither, or rob and sell them against their will, we stand against.”

我们反对将人带到这里，或者违背他们的意愿抢劫和出售他们。”

The remonstrance went nowhere, with the matter deemed too “weighty” and complex.

抗议没有任何结果，因为事情被认为过于“重大”和复杂。

The fact was that too many Quakers, including a large percentage of their leaders in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, owned slaves.

事实上，太多的贵格会教徒，包括 17 世纪末和 18 世纪初的大部分领导人，都拥有奴隶。

Some even dealt in the business of buying and selling enslaved people.

有些人甚至从事买卖奴隶的生意。

Quakers believed that all people had the spirit of God within them, women as well as men, Black people and white, American Indians—the Inner Light didn’t differentiate.

贵格会相信所有人的内心都有神的灵，无论女人还是男人，黑人还是白人，美国印第安人——内在之光没有区别。

But though Black people might have been considered equal to whites spiritually, that didn’t mean they were equal otherwise.

但是，尽管黑人在精神上可能被认为与白人平等，但这并不意味着他们在其他方面是平等的。

And here Quakers shared the common prejudices of their time.

在这里，贵格会教徒分享了他们那个时代的共同偏见。

The perception of Black inferiority was understandable enough.

对黑人自卑的看法是可以理解的。

In the mid-18th century, the 13 colonies had a quarter of a million enslaved people, 20 percent of the overall population.

18 世纪中叶，这 13 个殖民地有 25 万奴隶，占总人口的 20%。

Though conditions varied, almost all lived hard, distressed lives that were physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting.

尽管情况各不相同，但几乎所有人都过着艰苦、痛苦的生活，身体、情感和精神都疲惫不堪。

Kept illiterate, they had no access to the advantages white people enjoyed: education, rights, control over their persons and their labor, the common customs of individual, family, social, and civil life.

由于不识字，他们无法享受白人享有的优势：教育、权利、对其人身和劳动的控制、个人、家庭、社会和公民生活的共同习俗。

Husbands and wives were often cruelly separated from each other, and children from their parents.

丈夫和妻子常常被残酷地分开，孩子也常常被残酷地与父母分开。

Oppressed by these dehumanizing circumstances, they were perceived by the white world as incapable and contemptible.

受到这些非人性环境的压迫，他们被白人世界视为无能和可鄙的。

Imagine, said Benezet’s friend and fellow abolitionist John Woolman, if free people suffered the same circumstances: “[Would] we be less abject than they are?” But the idea of a humanity shared by Black and white people was to most an alien concept, absurd on its face.

贝尼泽特的朋友、废奴主义者约翰·伍尔曼说，想象一下，如果自由人民也遭受同样的处境：“我们会不会比他们更卑微？”但黑人和白人共有的人性观念对大多数人来说是一个陌生的概念，表面上很荒谬。

This common street-level prejudice was part and parcel of a larger construct, one that provided an intellectual framework that oriented scientists, philosophers, theologians, and humanists, a presupposition that inhabited the minds of the era’s great thinkers and ordinary people alike.

这种普遍的街头偏见是一个更大的结构的重要组成部分，这个结构提供了一个指导科学家、哲学家、神学家和人文主义者的知识框架，这个预设存在于那个时代伟大的思想家和普通民众的脑海中。

This principle, the so-called Great Chain of Being, provided a way of organizing the plenitude of nature—minerals, plants, and animals, including humankind—into a scale according to complexity, reasoning ability, and other criteria.

这一原则，即所谓的存在巨链，提供了一种根据复杂性、推理能力和其他标准将自然界的丰富性（矿物、植物和动物，包括人类）组织成一定规模的方法。

The races of man fit into this continuum as well, best illustrated by Carl Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, in which the great taxonomist placed white Europeans at the top of the hierarchy and Black people at the bottom.

人类的种族也符合这个连续体，卡尔·林奈的《自然系统》最好地说明了这一点，在该书中这位伟大的分类学家将欧洲白人置于等级制度的顶端，而黑人则置于底层。

The Great Chain of Being as an organizing principle had its origins in Plato and Aristotle, but it was in the 18th century, as the intellectual historian A.

存在巨链作为一种组织原则起源于柏拉图和亚里士多德，但正如思想史学家 A.

O.

奥。

Lovejoy explained, that the concept attained its widest diffusion and acceptance, as influential during that period as the theory of evolution would be after Darwin.

洛夫乔伊解释说，这一概念得到了最广泛的传播和接受，在那个时期的影响力就像达尔文之后的进化论一样。

This most fundamental scientific theory of its time nurtured a jaundiced perception of Black people, both enslaved and free, and the power and extent of this distorted perception were deep and lasting.

这一当时最基本的科学理论培育了对黑人（无论是被奴役的还是自由的）的偏见看法，这种扭曲看法的力量和程度是深刻而持久的。

Although slavery itself was age-old, the New World association of Africans with the institution gave it a racial identification it didn’t previously have.

尽管奴隶制本身由来已久，但非洲人与该制度的新世界协会赋予了它以前没有的种族认同。

With its steps of gradation, the Great Chain of Being provided a rationale for keeping Black people in perpetual servitude.

通过其分级步骤，存在巨链为让黑人永远处于奴役状态提供了理由。

Given the universal perception of Black inferiority, it is perhaps not surprising that the idea of educating Black slaves was seen as both futile and dangerous.

鉴于人们普遍认为黑人低人一等，教育黑人奴隶的想法被视为徒劳且危险，也许也就不足为奇了。

In the southern sections of the country, laws with significant penalties prohibited teaching the enslaved.

在该国南部地区，法律禁止对被奴役者进行严厉处罚。

In South Carolina, the fine for doing so was £100 “current money.” In other southern colonies anyone, white or Black, who dared teach enslaved individuals could be fined, imprisoned, or whipped.

在南卡罗来纳州，这样做的罚款为 100 英镑“现金”。在其他南方殖民地，任何胆敢教导被奴役者的人，无论是白人还是黑人，都可能被罚款、监禁或鞭打。

Educating Black people was considered a clear and present danger, especially in the aftermath of South Carolina’s Stono Rebellion of 1739, in which a literate enslaved man led a group that killed owners of a local store, seized weapons and powder, and marched toward Spanish Florida, killing more than 20 whites and setting fire to plantations along the way.

教育黑人被认为是一种明显而现实的危险，尤其是在 1739 年南卡罗来纳州斯托诺叛乱之后，一名受过教育的奴隶带领一群人杀害了当地一家商店的老板，缴获了武器和火药，并向西属佛罗里达进军，杀死了 20 多名白人，并纵火焚烧了沿途的种植园。

Into this world stepped Anthony Benezet.

安东尼·贝内泽踏入了这个世界。

Born in 1713 into a Huguenot family that had escaped France when he was two years old, Benezet moved with his family to England and subsequently to Pennsylvania, where both he and his father joined the Philadelphia Society of Friends.

贝内泽于 1713 年出生于一个胡格诺派家庭，两岁时就逃离了法国，贝内泽随家人搬到了英国，随后又搬到了宾夕法尼亚州，在那里他和父亲都加入了费城公谊会。

Benezet was what we might today call a late bloomer, unable to settle on work until he was 26, when he found a job as a teacher and discovered his vocation.

贝内泽是我们今天所说的大器晚成者，直到 26 岁才找到了一份教师的工作并发现了自己的职业，直到他才开始工作。

He had fallen into his career in the classroom by chance: An opening had presented itself, and in need of a job, he took it.

他在课堂上的职业生涯是偶然的：一个空缺出现了，需要一份工作，他接受了它。

“In the first instance,” one of his friends wrote, he “commenced teaching for a subsistence.” But he soon discovered a talent for teaching and then a passion for it.

“首先，”他的一位朋友写道，“他开始教书是为了维持生计。”但他很快就发现了教学天赋，并对此产生了热情。

As a schoolmaster in Philadelphia’s Quaker school system, he was known for his innovations in curricula and for his gentle manner with students.

作为费城贵格会学校系统的校长，他以其课程创新和对待学生的温和态度而闻名。

“If I have any service at all in creation,” he wrote to a friend, “it is in the education of children.”

“如果说我在创作方面有什么贡献的话，”他在给朋友的信中写道，“那就是对孩子的教育。”

In 1750, at the age of 37—well into middle age by the standards of the time—Benezet created a small explosion in the world of education.

1750 年，37 岁的贝尼泽在教育界掀起了一场小爆炸，按照当时的标准来看，他已经步入中年了。

He began teaching Black children in his home at night, fully understanding what a controversial thing he was doing but never imagining the consequences for both himself and society.

他开始晚上在家里教黑人孩子，充分理解他正在做的一件有争议的事情，但从未想象过给他自己和社会带来的后果。

We do not know what specifically led him to take this action.

我们不知道是什么原因导致他采取这一行动。

We do know that Benezet had Black friends, an unusual circumstance then.

我们确实知道贝内泽有黑人朋友，这在当时是一个不寻常的情况。

And we know that he spent considerable time talking with Black people who worked along Philadelphia’s bustling Delaware River waterfront.

我们知道，他花了相当多的时间与在费城繁华的特拉华河畔工作的黑人交谈。

It was there, too, that he saw Black children, some accompanying their mothers or fathers, some themselves bound to masters, others running through the streets unattended, none of them able to read, write, or do sums.

正是在那里，他还看到了黑人孩子，有的陪伴着他们的父母，有的自己被主人束缚，还有的在无人看管的情况下在街道上奔跑，他们都不会读书、写字或算术。

We can easily imagine how Benezet would have been moved with compassion toward them, leading him to establish what in a short time came to be known simply as Benezet’s School.

我们很容易想象贝内泽会如何对他们产生同情心，从而导致他在短时间内建立了被简称为贝内泽学校的学校。

It was the first school for Black children anywhere in the American colonies.

这是美国殖民地第一所黑人儿童学校。

The classroom where he taught was most likely in the downstairs living area of the home he shared with his wife, Joyce.

他任教的教室很可能位于他与妻子乔伊斯（Joyce）同住的家的楼下起居区。

The residence itself was one of Philadelphia’s early brick houses, two stories, well built but, like its Quaker owners, modest.

该住宅本身是费城早期的砖房之一，有两层，建造精良，但像它的贵格会业主一样，很朴素。

His students were free and enslaved, both Black and “mulatto.” Later he opened his classroom doors to adults as well.

他的学生有自由的，也有被奴役的，既有黑人，也有“黑白混血儿”。后来他也向成年人敞开了教室的大门。

During the 1750s, while teaching white students at Philadelphia’s Penn Charter School, he persuaded the Quakers to open a girls’ school, arguably the first American day school for girls.

1750 年代，他在费城宾夕法尼亚特许学校教白人学生时，说服贵格会开办一所女子学校，这可以说是美国第一所女子走读学校。

Teaching Black and white students the same curriculum at the same time allowed Benezet a singular perspective.

同时向黑人和白人学生教授相同的课程，使贝内泽有了独特的视角。

Judging his Black students’ progress, Benezet reported,

贝内泽报告说，在判断黑人学生的进步时，

I can with truth and sincerity declare, that I have found amongst the negroes as great variety of talents, as among the like number of whites, and I am bold to assert that the notion entertained by some, that the blacks are inferior in their capacities, is a vulgar prejudice, founded on the pride or ignorance of their lordly masters, who have kept their slaves at such a distance as to be unable to form a right judgment of them.

我可以真诚地宣称，我在黑人中发现了各种各样的才能，就像在白人中一样，我大胆地断言，一些人持有的认为黑人能力较差的观念是一种粗俗的偏见，这种偏见是建立在他们高贵主人的骄傲或无知的基础上的，他们与奴隶保持着一定的距离，以至于无法对他们做出正确的判断。

Benezet carried on his home night school for 20 years.

贝内泽在家里的夜校里进行了 20 年。

Then in 1770, he persuaded the Quakers to establish an “Africans’ School” as part of the Friends’ public-private school network.

然后在 1770 年，他说服贵格会建立一所“非洲学校”，作为贵格会公私立学校网络的一部分。

The success of his night school provided the necessary evidence: The alert, curious, receptive students demonstrated that the idea of Black schooling was not a lost cause.

他的夜校的成功提供了必要的证据：机敏、好奇、乐于接受的学生表明黑人学校教育的想法并不是一个失败的事业。

At least so far as the Society of Friends was concerned, Benezet had proved that Black people were intellectually as well as spiritually on the same plane as their white contemporaries, equal members of the same, single human family.

至少就公谊会而言，贝内泽已经证明黑人在智力和精神上与同时代的白人处于同一水平，是同一个人类大家庭的平等成员。

In terms of the general beliefs of the time, Benezet’s home school and the Quaker Africans’ School were breakthroughs.

就当时的普遍信仰而言，贝尼泽的家庭学校和贵格会非洲人学校是突破性的。

Both schools ended up playing an important role in Philadelphia’s Black community.

这两所学校最终在费城黑人社区中发挥了重要作用。

Absalom Jones, cofounder of the Free African Society and leading architect of the African Church of Philadelphia, learned to read and write at Benezet’s night school and would later comment on the importance of the mathematical instruction he received there.

阿布萨罗姆·琼斯是自由非洲协会的联合创始人和费城非洲教会的首席建筑师，他在贝内泽的夜校学习读书和写作，后来评论了他在那里接受的数学教育的重要性。

James Forten, a Black sailmaker whose business acumen made him one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest citizens, attended the Africans’ School.

詹姆斯·福滕 (James Forten) 是一名黑人帆船制造商，他的商业头脑使他成为费城最富有的公民之一，就读于非洲人学校。

Forten’s father, who taught him sailmaking, may well have been a student at Benezet’s home school.

福滕的父亲教他制作帆船，很可能是贝内泽家庭学校的学生。

Jones and Forten were leading abolitionists; Forten was an important supporter of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator .

琼斯和福滕是主要废奴主义者。福滕是威廉·劳埃德·加里森的《解放者》的重要支持者。

Along with Richard Allen, they were at the center of organizing and giving shape to Philadelphia’s African American community and its emerging institutions.

他们与理查德·艾伦一起，是组织和塑造费城非裔美国人社区及其新兴机构的中心人物。

It’s a reasonable assumption that Jones, Forten, and many of their fellow students were stimulated toward accomplishment by educational environments that recognized their humanity and potential, a rarity in colonial America.

琼斯、福滕和他们的许多同学受到认可他们人性和潜力的教育环境的激励，这是一个合理的假设，这在殖民地美国是罕见的。

Benezet maintained his close ties with the Africans’ School until his death in 1784.

贝内泽与非洲学校保持着密切的联系，直至 1784 年去世。

As his health deteriorated and he began to anticipate the end of life, Benezet reaffirmed his earlier conclusions about Black intelligence and potential.

随着他的健康状况恶化，他开始预见生命的终结，贝尼泽重申了他之前关于黑人智力和潜力的结论。

As he wrote, he’d had the opportunity for many years of knowing the temper and genius of the numerous Africans under his tutelage.

正如他所写，多年来他有机会了解他指导下的众多非洲人的脾气和天才。

When he died, he left the bulk of his estate to the school (after providing for his wife).

当他去世时，他将大部分财产留给了学校（在供养他的妻子之后）。

The first line of his will read, “Be it remembered that I, Anthony Benezet, a teacher of the free school for the black people of Philadelphia …” For all that he had done in his life, this is how he regarded himself.

他的遗嘱第一行写道：“请记住，我，安东尼·贝内泽，费城黑人免费学校的一名教师……”尽管他一生中所做的一切，但这就是他对自己的看法。

Benezet’s biographers have noted his school, but they have failed to convey its historical significance.

贝内泽的传记作者注意到了他的学校，但未能传达其历史意义。

Instead, almost all commentators have concentrated on the immense influence of his antislavery writings, which did so much to end the transatlantic slave trade.

相反，几乎所有评论家都把注意力集中在他的反奴隶制著作的巨大影响力上，这些著作为结束跨大西洋奴隶贸易做出了巨大贡献。

Yet a close reading of those texts illuminates how Benezet’s experiences with Black students gave his antislavery discourse its galvanizing force.

然而，仔细阅读这些文本就会发现，贝内泽与黑人学生的经历如何赋予他的反奴隶制话语以激励力量。

What he found among his students, namely that they were full human beings, not only spiritually but also in terms of talent, intellect, and temperament, directly informed his understanding of the slave trade—“this enormous evil,” he called it, “this prodigious iniquity.”

他在学生中发现，他们不仅在精神上而且在才华、智力和性情方面都是完整的人，这直接影响了他对奴隶贸易的理解——“这种巨大的罪恶，”他称之为“这种巨大的罪恶”。

We can safely assume that Benezet was appalled by the institution of slavery before he launched his night school.

我们可以有把握地假设，贝内泽在开办夜校之前就对奴隶制感到震惊。

But until then, he had neither written nor spoken much about it.

但在那之前，他既没有写下也没有谈论过这件事。

Only in 1750, the year he opened the school, did he begin talking about slavery, insistently and publicly, “lifting up his voice on behalf of an oppressed and wretched portion of his fellow beings,” as his early biographer Roberts Vaux put it.

直到 1750 年，也就是他开办学校的那一年，他才开始坚持公开地谈论奴隶制，正如他的早期传记作家罗伯茨·沃克斯所说，“代表他同胞中受压迫和不幸的部分大声疾呼”。

It took Benezet a while to get his thoughts in order, but once he did, he began to write.

贝内泽花了一段时间才理清思路，但一旦理清思路，他就开始写作。

His first publication came in 1754: An Epistle of Caution and Advice Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves, which was presented to the Philadelphia Quaker monthly meeting, then to other monthly and quarterly meetings, and finally to the senior Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

他的第一篇出版物于 1754 年出版：《关于购买和保留奴隶的警告和建议的书信》，该书被提交给费城贵格会月度会议，然后提交给其他月度和季度会议，最后提交给费城高级年会。

An Epistle was an exhortation to the writer’s fellow Quakers, urging them to live up to their faith as Christians, to their sense of plain justice, and to their feelings as human beings.

这封书信是对作者的贵格会同胞的劝告，敦促他们恪守作为基督徒的信仰、正义感和作为人类的感情。

They should avoid in any manner “the practice of making slaves of our fellow creatures.” He invoked Christ’s command, the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

他们应该以任何方式避免“使我们的同胞成为奴隶的做法”。他引用了基督的命令，即黄金法则：己所不欲，勿施于人。

It was the first time the Quaker overseers had allowed that fundamental Christian maxim to be published, given how awkwardly it reflected on slaveholding Friends.

这是贵格会监督者第一次允许出版这条基本的基督教格言，因为它对奴隶制之友来说是多么尴尬。

Benezet also invoked Exodus: He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

贝尼泽还引用了《出埃及记》：偷窃一个人并将其出卖的人，或者如果发现他在他手中，他一定会被处死。

Not that any nonviolent Quaker would ever put anyone to death.

并不是说任何非暴力的贵格会教徒都会处死任何人。

But Benezet wanted his readers to understand the utter depths of the practice of buying, selling, and owning human beings.

但贝内泽希望他的读者能够彻底理解买卖和拥有人类的实践。

“We entreat you in the bowels of gospel love,” he wrote.

“我们以福音之爱的心恳求你们，”他写道。

Do not “keep them in bondage.”

不要“束缚他们”。

An Epistle was the first antislavery remonstrance the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting ever adopted, but the practical effect was somewhere between modest and nil: The Society of Friends issued no order to free slaves and imposed no penalties for owning them.

一封书信是费城年会通过的第一份反奴隶制抗议书，但实际效果介于适度和零之间：公谊会没有发布释放奴隶的命令，也没有对拥有奴隶施加任何惩罚。

Quaker slaveholders contended that abolishing slavery would “give uneasiness to many brethren,” that it would create disunity, and that the matter was one perhaps best left to God.

贵格会奴隶主认为，废除奴隶制会“给许多弟兄带来不安”，会造成不团结，这个问题也许最好留给上帝处理。

After all, “the Lord in time to come might open a way of deliverance for these people.” Over the years, the Quaker community evolved on the issue; by the end of the 1750s, most Quakers condemned slavery.

毕竟，“主在未来可能会为这些人开辟一条拯救之​​路。”多年来，贵格会社区在这个问题上不断发展。到 1750 年代末，大多数贵格会教徒谴责奴隶制。

But still there was no formal prohibition, and many Friends who owned slaves were simply not motivated to give them up.

但仍然没有正式的禁令，许多拥有奴隶的朋友根本没有动力放弃奴隶。

The enslaved people had cost good money, worked well, and—at least from the Quakers’ perspective—were often treated decently.

被奴役的人花了不少钱，工作也很好，而且——至少从贵格会的角度来看——经常受到体面的对待。

Given those circumstances, Benezet’s appeal to Christian love, fairness, and justice had little of the desired effect.

鉴于这种情况，贝尼泽对基督教之爱、公平和正义的呼吁并没有达到预期的效果。

His next tract, Observations on the Enslaving, Importing, and Purchasing of Negroes (1759), took another approach.

他的下一本小册子《关于奴役、进口和购买黑人的观察》（1759 年）采取了另一种方法。

Like the epistle, Observations was addressed to Benezet’s Quaker religious community, but it also initiated what became an ongoing endeavor that grew from his experience at his night school: to enlarge the understanding of Black people as equal human beings.

就像这封信一样，《观察》是写给贝内泽的贵格会宗教团体的，但它也引发了他在夜校的经历中不断发展的努力：扩大对黑人作为平等人类的理解。

Observations is an essay on the Golden Rule that unpacks the saying beyond its obvious meaning in order to bring out its underlying theme.

《观察》是一篇关于黄金法则的文章，它超越了其明显的含义，揭示了这句话的基本主题。

The text of the Golden Rule provides a precept for moral behavior.

黄金法则的文本为道德行为提供了戒律。

The subtext on which the precept rests is the assertion of reciprocity or “mutuality.” Benezet’s exegesis of “that divine Rule” brings together we and they: “To do unto all Men, as we would they should do unto us .” The two sides, ourselves and others—in this context, white and Black—are linked in a relation of reciprocal morality.

该戒律所依据的潜台词是互惠或“相互性”的主张。贝尼泽对“神圣法则”的解释将我们和他们联系在一起：“我们希望他们对我们做的事，就对所有人做。”双方，我们自己和其他人——在这种情况下，白人和黑人——以互惠的道德关系联系在一起。

The two races exist, writes Benezet, on the same moral level.

贝内泽写道，这两个种族在同一道德层面上存在。

In this regard, Observations marks the ongoing expansion of a mind wholly engrossed by the great moral issue of his time: what we would call racism, although the word itself wouldn’t be coined for another 150 years.

在这方面，《观察》标志着一个完全专注于他那个时代的重大道德问题的思想的不断扩展：我们称之为种族主义，尽管这个词本身在接下来的 150 年里才被创造出来。

In opening his Black school, Benezet had recognized that African Americans had the same talents and intelligence as whites.

在开设黑人学校时，贝尼泽认识到非裔美国人拥有与白人相同的才能和智力。

Now his recognition of Black intelligence had taken him beyond the question of educability, to a deeper level of conviction about the essential sameness of the races.

现在，他对黑人智力的认识使他超越了可教育性问题，更深层次地相信种族本质上是相同的。

Observations was without precedent not only in thought but also in rhetoric.

观察不仅在思想上而且在修辞上都是史无前例的。

The tract included vivid portraits of the murder, kidnapping, plunder, and carnage that accompanied the slave trade.

该小册子生动地描绘了伴随奴隶贸易而来的谋杀、绑架、掠夺和屠杀。

Benezet found material for these descriptions in various travel narratives that by this time had become available.

贝内泽在此时已经可用的各种旅行叙述中找到了这些描述的材料。

Europeans who had lived in Africa for years and had been intimately involved in the slave trade described the blood-drenched warfare that accompanied the gathering of slaves.

在非洲生活多年并密切参与奴隶贸易的欧洲人描述了伴随着奴隶聚集而来的血腥战争。

They wrote about the capture of children (“carried in sacks”), the slave marts where humans were bought and sold “like beasts,” and other hair-raising cruelties.

他们写到了对儿童的抓捕（“装在麻袋里”）、奴隶市场“像野兽一样”买卖人类，以及其他令人毛骨悚然的残酷行为。

No one before Benezet had ever presented such vivid descriptions as an antislavery argument.

在贝内泽之前，没有人提出过像反奴隶制论证这样生动的描述。

Benezet—according to one modern commentator, David L.

贝内泽——根据一位现代评论家 David L.

Crosby—virtually invented this rhetorical style, which set him apart from earlier antislavery polemicists.

克罗斯比实际上发明了这种修辞风格，这使他与早期的反奴隶制辩论家区分开来。

It’s not hard to imagine the effect these word pictures must have had on nonviolent Quakers, never previously exposed to the naked ferocity that marked chattel slavery.

不难想象这些文字图片对非暴力贵格会教徒产生的影响，他们以前从未接触过动产奴隶制的赤裸裸的残暴行为。

The scenes of horror Benezet described in Observations gripped people’s imaginations.

贝内泽在《观察》中描述的恐怖场景激发了人们的想象力。

His next work, A Short Account of That Part of Africa Inhabited by Negroes (1762), intensified the effect.

他的下一部作品《黑人居住的非洲地区简述》（1762 年）强化了这种影响。

He had previously stated that Black people possessed intelligence, talent, temperament, character, and morality, just as white people did.

他此前曾表示，黑人与白人一样拥有智慧、才华、气质、品格和道德。

But these characteristics were difficult to see in a population as oppressed as America’s enslaved Africans.

但这些特征在像美国被奴役的非洲人这样受压迫的人群中很难看到。

What was needed was an understanding of what the lives of Black people were like before the degradation of slavery was forced upon them.

我们需要的是了解黑人在奴隶制被迫退化之前的生活是什么样的。

Such an understanding, however, was impossible in America.

然而，这种理解在美国是不可能的。

Benezet needed to look abroad.

贝内泽需要把目光投向国外。

As it turned out, the same writers who had described slavery’s brutality in Africa had also spent years with Africans who lived ordinary lives under normal circumstances.

事实证明，描述非洲奴隶制残酷行为的作家也曾与在正常情况下过着平凡生活的非洲人一起度过了数年。

These writers provided rich documentation of such encounters as well.

这些作者也提供了此类遭遇的丰富文档。

“Africans are,” wrote Willem Bosman, Dutch chief merchant for the Gold Coast, “generally friendly with strangers, of a mild conversation, courteous, affable, and easy to overcome with reason.

黄金海岸的荷兰首席商人威廉·博斯曼（Willem Bosman）写道：“非洲人通常对陌生人很友好，谈话温和，彬彬有礼，和蔼可亲，很容易用理性克服。

In conversation they discover a great quickness of parts and understanding.” “They are,” wrote William Smith, another European who had lived in Africa for many years, “civil, good-natured people, industrious to the last degree.” Andre Brüe, the French governor for Senegal, saw them that way, too.

在交谈中，他们发现零件和理解能力非常快。”另一位在非洲生活多年的欧洲人威廉·史密斯写道：“他们是文明、善良的人，勤奋到了极点。”法国驻塞内加尔总督安德烈·布吕也这么看他们。

Africans, he wrote, were “generally good-natured and civil, and may be brought to anything by fair and soft means.

他写道，非洲人“普遍性情善良、文明，可以通过公平和温和的手段来做任何事情。

If you make them presents they will recompense you double.

如果你给他们礼物，他们会加倍回报你。

If you want anything of them and ask it they seldom deny it, even though they had occasion for it themselves.

如果你想要他们的任何东西并提出要求，他们很少会否认，即使他们自己有机会这样做。

But to treat them harshly or think to gain anything of them by force is to dispute with the moon.”

但若对他们严酷对待，或想以武力夺取他们的任何东西，那就是与月亮争执了。”

From these unimpeachable witnesses, Benezet wrote, “it will appear that the Negroes are generally a sensible, humane, and sociable people, and that their capacity is as good and as capable of improvement as that of the whites.” Benezet had been making this case in one way or another since the early 1750s, but for white people who had encountered Black people only as illiterate, subservient laborers and viewed them as dull, slothful, and dissolute, the idea that they were in truth sensible, humane, sociable beings must have been more than a little disorienting.

贝内泽写道，从这些无可指摘的证人看来，“黑人总体上是一个明智、人道、善于交际的民族，他们的能力与白人一样优秀，也有能力改进。”自 1750 年代初以来，贝内泽特一直以这种或那种方式阐述这一观点，但对于白人来说，他们只将黑人视为文盲、顺从的劳动者，并认为他们是迟钝、懒惰和放荡的人，他们实际上是明智的、人道的、善于交际的人，这一想法一定会让人感到有点迷失方向。

A Short Account moves from one innovative argument to another.

简短的叙述从一个创新论点转向另一个论点。

It demonstrates that Blacks and whites are “by nature upon an equality,” as Benezet put it.

正如贝内泽所说，它表明黑人和白人“生来平等”。

But in this book, he reached beyond the insular world of Quakerdom and, for that matter, Christianity.

但在这本书中，他超越了贵格会的孤立世界，也超越了基督教。

Benezet was not a man of the Enlightenment, but he lived in the heart of the Enlightenment era, with its expanded definitions of humanity and humankind’s capabilities.

贝内泽不是启蒙运动的人物，但他生活在启蒙运动时代的中心，其对人性和人类能力的定义得到了扩展。

In A Short Account, he appeals to the secular world by incorporating the ideas of three Enlightenment thinkers—James Foster, George Wallace, and Francis Hutcheson—who inveighed against slavery as a fundamental violation of natural and legal rights.

在《简述》中，他通过融合三位启蒙思想家——詹姆斯·福斯特、乔治·华莱士和弗朗西斯·哈奇森——的思想来吸引世俗世界，他们猛烈抨击奴隶制是对自然权利和法律权利的根本侵犯。

In so doing, Benezet broadened his audience and provided himself with an extra dimension of firepower at a time when Enlightenment thought was striking lightning in the minds of men and the principles of democratic political theory, espoused by Locke and Montesquieu, were gathering adherents in Europe and the American colonies.

通过这样做，贝内泽扩大了他的受众，并为自己提供了额外的火力，当时启蒙思想在人们的头脑中闪电般地闪过，洛克和孟德斯鸠所拥护的民主政治理论的原则在欧洲和美洲殖民地聚集了追随者。

Each of the Enlightenment figures Benezet now brought into the fray insisted that according to natural law, an individual’s self belongs exclusively to that person and cannot be alienated—not by kings, not by governments, not by other persons.

贝尼泽现在加入争论的每一位启蒙运动人物都坚持认为，根据自然法，个人的自我完全属于那个人，不能被国王、政府或其他人疏远。

Liberty is essentially inherent in personhood; so for Black people, so for white people, so for all people.

自由本质上是人格所固有的；对于黑人如此，对于白人如此，对于所有人也是如此。

By the time of A Short Account, Benezet’s tracts had already had a disruptive effect on opinion in Pennsylvania.

到《简述》出版时，贝尼泽的小册子已经对宾夕法尼亚州的舆论产生了破坏性影响。

His friend Benjamin Rush (George Washington’s surgeon general) wrote to a British colleague, “Anthony Benezet stood alone a few years ago, in opposing Negro slavery in Philadelphia; and now three quarters of the province, as well as the city, cry out against it.” By this time, his books were also having consequences in other, unexpected places.

他的朋友本杰明·拉什（乔治·华盛顿的卫生局局长）写信给一位英国同事，“安东尼·贝内泽几年前独自一人反对费城的黑人奴隶制；现在该省四分之三的人以及该市都大声疾呼反对。”此时，他的书也在其他意想不到的地方产生了影响。

Abolitionism in England was not much of a public topic until a government bureaucrat named Granville Sharp took up the cause of Jonathan Strong, an enslaved man who was about to be sold off into the West Indies, and by chance came across a copy of A Short Account in a bookstore.

在英国，废奴主义并不是一个公共话题，直到一位名叫格兰维尔·夏普的政府官僚开始为乔纳森·斯特朗（Jonathan Strong）辩护。

Benezet’s book gave him much of the information he needed to shape his legal arguments, which won the day, and Strong was freed by London’s lord mayor.

贝内泽的书为他提供了形成法律论证所需的大量信息，最终赢得了胜利，斯特朗被伦敦市长释放。

The case awakened the English public to slavery and slave trade issues and made Sharp a public figure.

此案唤醒了英国公众对奴隶制和奴隶贸易问题的认识，并使夏普成为公众人物。

Seven years later, Sharp—who by this time had become England’s leading abolitionist—brought another case against a slaveholder who wanted to sell his property to a West Indian buyer.

七年后，夏普——此时已成为英格兰主要废奴主义者——对一名想将其财产出售给西印度买家的奴隶主提起了另一起诉讼。

This, the James Somerset case, was heard by England’s chief justice, Lord Mansfield.

詹姆斯·萨默塞特案由英国首席大法官曼斯菲尔德勋爵审理。

The Jonathan Strong case had been decided on narrow grounds.

乔纳森·斯特朗案的裁决是基于狭隘的理由。

Strong had been freed, but the decision didn’t pertain to anyone but him.

斯特朗已经被释放，但这个决定除了他之外不属于任何人。

The James Somerset case, however, had potentially widespread consequences for slavery itself.

然而，詹姆斯·萨默塞特案可能对奴隶制本身产生广泛的影响。

As the opposing lawyers were preparing to present their case, Sharp received several copies of Benezet’s recently published magnum opus, Some Historical Account of Guinea .

当对方律师准备陈述案情时，夏普收到了几本贝内泽最近出版的巨著《几内亚的一些历史记述》。

Sharp in turn gave copies to Lord Mansfield, to First Lord of the Treasury Lord North, and to the solicitors who would be arguing the case for him.

夏普又将副本交给了曼斯菲尔德勋爵、第一财政大臣诺斯勋爵以及将为他辩护的律师。

Some Historical Account provided Sharp and his solicitors with in-depth information unavailable elsewhere.

一些历史记录为夏普和他的律师提供了其他地方无法获得的深入信息。

It made them experts on Black slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

这使他们成为黑人奴隶制和跨大西洋奴隶贸易方面的专家。

No doubt it stoked their emotions about the cause they were representing.

毫无疑问，这激发了他们对自己所代表的事业的情感。

In the end, Mansfield’s verdict did not free all of England’s 15,000 enslaved people, as Sharp had hoped.

最终，曼斯菲尔德的判决并没有像夏普所希望的那样，让英格兰 15,000 名奴隶全部获得自由。

But it did establish that England had no laws pertaining to slavery and that a person who brought an enslaved individual into the country could not sell that person.

但它确实规定英格兰没有有关奴隶制的法律，并且将被奴役的个人带入该国的人不能出售该人。

Over the years, Sharp and Benezet became close allies.

多年来，夏普和贝内泽成为亲密的盟友。

As abolitionist sentiment in England grew, Sharp became chairman of London’s Abolition Committee, which had been initiated by the Society of Friends, itself heavily influenced by Benezet.

随着英国废奴主义情绪的高涨，夏普成为伦敦废奴委员会的主席，该委员会是由公谊会发起的，而公谊会本身深受贝内泽的影响。

Another Benezet ally was John Wesley, founder and leader of the increasingly broad and influential Methodist movement.

贝内泽的另一个盟友是约翰·韦斯利，他是日益广泛和有影响力的卫理公会运动的创始人和领导者。

Wesley had been against slavery for years, but it had never featured significantly in his sermons or writings.

卫斯理多年来一直反对奴隶制，但他的布道或著作中从未出现过奴隶制的重要内容。

But Some Historical Account struck him with such force that he would confront slavery head-on for the rest of his days.

但一些历史记载给他留下了如此深刻的印象，以至于他将在余生中直面奴隶制。

Benezet’s work moved Wesley to compose his own antislavery book, Thoughts Upon Slavery, in which he not only used Benezet’s ideas and information but also copied whole sections of Benezet’s text outright.

贝内泽的工作促使韦斯利撰写了自己的反奴隶制著作《奴隶制的思考》，其中他不仅使用了贝内泽的想法和信息，还直接复制了贝内泽文本的整个部分。

Benezet was only too happy to have Wesley’s work made public, and he himself republished Thoughts Upon Slavery with his own extensive notes.

贝尼泽非常高兴韦斯利的作品得以公开，他本人也重新出版了《奴隶制思考》，并附上了自己的大量笔记。

Wesley’s preaching and writing against slavery riveted huge audiences.

卫斯理反对奴隶制的讲道和著作吸引了大批观众。

“Do you never feel another’s pain?” Wesley asked the slave ship captains and plantation owners.

“你从来感受不到别人的痛苦吗？”韦斯利询问了奴隶船船长和种植园主。

“Have you no sympathy?

“你就没有一点同情心吗？

No sense of human woe?

没有人类苦难的意识吗？

No pity for the miserable?

对不幸的人没有怜悯之心吗？

When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow creatures, was you a stone or a brute?

当你看到同胞们流淌的眼睛、起伏的乳房、流血的身体和饱受折磨的四肢时，你是石头还是野兽？

Did you look on them with the eyes of a tiger?”

你是用虎眼看他们吗？”

Benezet’s circle of comrades and supporters grew to include, in addition to Sharp and Wesley: Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Abbe Raynal, Marquis de Condorcet, and Black abolitionists Quobna Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, James Forten, and Absalom Jones.

除了夏普和韦斯利之外，贝尼泽的同志和支持者圈子还包括本杰明·富兰克林、本杰明·拉什、阿贝·雷纳尔、孔多塞侯爵以及黑人废奴主义者库布纳·库戈阿诺、奥劳达·埃奎亚诺、詹姆斯·福滕和阿布萨洛姆·琼斯。

But none was as consequential as Thomas Clarkson.

但没有一个像托马斯·克拉克森那样具有重要意义。

Clarkson was a 24-year-old divinity student at Cambridge University when he won the Junior Latin Essay prize.

24 岁的克拉克森获得少年拉丁作文奖时，还是剑桥大学的神学院学生。

A year later, he entered the competition for the senior prize, which required an essay on the topic, “Is it lawful to enslave others against their will?” Knowing little about slavery, Clarkson was at a loss until he came across Benezet’s Some Historical Account, the same book that had moved Wesley so profoundly.

一年后，他参加了高级奖项的角逐，比赛要求一篇论文，题目是“违背他人意愿奴役他人是否合法？”克拉克森对奴隶制知之甚少，直到他读到贝尼泽的《一些历史记述》，这本书才深深地感动了韦斯利。

“In this precious book,” Clarkson wrote, “I found almost all I wanted.” Benezet’s book, he said later, “was instrumental, beyond any other book ever before published, in disseminating a proper knowledge and detestation of this trade.” Clarkson ended up winning the senior prize as well.

“在这本珍贵的书中，”克拉克森写道，“我几乎找到了我想要的一切。”贝内泽的书，他后来说，“在传播正确的知识和对这一行业的厌恶方面，比以前出版的任何其他书都发挥了重要作用。”克拉克森最终也赢得了高级奖项。

Clarkson’s entry in “an innocent contest for literary honor” continued to have a profound influence on his thought.

克拉克森参加“一场无辜的文学荣誉竞赛”继续对他的思想产生深远的影响。

On his way to London after giving a reading in Cambridge, he was so troubled by Benezet’s exposition of slavery’s horrors that he got down from his horse and sat “disconsolate on the turf by the roadside.

在剑桥读书会结束后，在前往伦敦的途中，他对贝内泽对奴隶制恐怖的阐述感到非常困扰，以至于他下了马，“郁郁寡欢地坐在路边的草坪上。

…

……

Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true it was time some person should see these calamities to their end.”

这时我的脑海中出现了一个想法，如果这篇文章的内容是真实的，那么是时候有人应该看到这些灾难的结束了。”

After a period of soul searching, Clarkson gave up his clerical aspirations and devoted himself to the campaign against slavery.

经过一段时间的自我反省后，克拉克森放弃了自己的牧师抱负，全身心投入到反对奴隶制的运动中。

He first associated himself with the London Abolition Committee and then succeeded in pulling the reform parliamentarian William Wilberforce into the struggle.

他首先与伦敦废奴委员会联系，然后成功地将改革派议员威廉·威尔伯福斯拉入斗争。

Wilberforce was one of the most forceful speakers in Parliament, and in 1789, he entered his first bill to prohibit the slave trade.

威尔伯福斯是议会中最具影响力的发言人之一，1789 年，他提出了第一个禁止奴隶贸易的法案。

The shipping interests and sugar industry fought back with all their immense wealth and political power.

航运利益集团和制糖业以其巨大的财富和政治权力进行了反击。

It took the antislavery forces 19 years—until 1808—before the opposition finally crumbled and Great Britain prohibited the slave trade.

反奴隶制力量花了 19 年时间——直到 1808 年——才最终崩溃，英国也禁止了奴隶贸易。

In that time, Clarkson served as Wilberforce’s chief adviser, public relations person, and researcher, as well as the orchestrator of the massive petition drives that fueled Wilberforce’s campaign.

当时，克拉克森担任威尔伯福斯的首席顾问、公关人员和研究员，以及推动威尔伯福斯竞选活动的大规模请愿活动的协调人。

Benezet died 24 years before the antislave trade bill passed.

贝内泽在反奴隶贸易法案通过前 24 年去世。

But for decades, his spirit continued to influence the great debate.

但几十年来，他的精神继续影响着这场伟大的辩论。

Wilberforce used some of Benezet’s arguments and, as historian Maurice Jackson has shown, even some of Benezet’s language.

威尔伯福斯使用了贝内泽的一些论点，正如历史学家莫里斯·杰克逊所表明的那样，甚至使用了贝内泽的一些语言。

“No good effort is ever lost,” Clarkson wrote.

“任何努力都不会白费，”克拉克森写道。

“For if he, who makes the virtuous attempt, should be prevented by death from succeeding in it, can he not speak, though in his tomb?

“如果一个人做了善行，却因死亡而无法成功，那么即使在坟墓里，他也不能说话吗？

Will not his works still breathe his sentiments upon it?”

他的作品难道不仍然带有他的情感吗？”

Slavery itself was abolished in England in 1833.

1833 年，英国废除了奴隶制。

In America, abolition took a longer, rougher road.

在美国，废除死刑走了一条更长、更艰难的道路。

But Benezet had been there at the start, and he had lit a fire under that movement as well, beginning in 1750, when he first opened his home to students of color.

但贝内泽从一开始就参与其中，从 1750 年开始，他也点燃了这场运动的火焰，当时他第一次向有色人种学生开放了自己的家。

Benezet left few obvious traces of his interior life.

贝内泽的内心生活几乎没有留下明显的痕迹。

He kept no journal, no diary.

他没有写日记，没有日记。

He rarely talked about himself.

他很少谈论自己。

But in his essays and books, we can trace the evolution of a mind that started in the room where for 20 years he taught Philadelphia’s African and mixed-race children.

但在他的文章和书籍中，我们可以追溯他思想的演变，这种演变始于他在 20 年来教费城的非洲和混血儿童的房间里。

For all the vast influence of his antislavery efforts, the idea of Black and white equality may well be Benezet’s most profound and enduring contribution to the American democratic enterprise.

尽管他的反奴隶制努力产生了巨大影响，但黑人和白人平等的思想很可能是贝内泽对美国民主事业最深刻、最持久的贡献。