In this article, the influential newspaper The Revolutions of Paris asks if Africans and their descendants are "Born to Slavery?" as part of a general consideration of the situation in the French colonies.

But it is said that Negroes are a type of men born to slavery . . . they are narrow-minded, deceitful, and wicked. Even they admit to the superiority of Whites, and almost to the legality of their state.

It is not true that Negroes are narrow-minded. Experience has proven that they have succeeded in the sciences, and if the mindlessness in which they are plunged makes them believe that Whites are a superior race, liberty will soon bring them up to the same level. As for what people say of their wickedness, it will never equal the cruelty of their masters.

Source: The Revolutions of Paris, no. 66 (9Ð16 October 1790), 13Ð17.