Mirabeau exposed the colonists’ counting logic as reducing slaves to livestock

Evidence

“The free blacks are proprietors and taxpayers, and yet they have not been allowed to vote,” he noted. “And as for the slaves, either they are men or they are not; if the colonists consider them men, let them free them and make them eligible for seats; if the contrary is the case, have we, in apportioning deputies according to the population of France, taken into consideration the number of our horses and mules?” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 262

Categorization

• SEED: Mirabeau’s horses-and-mules reductio is a perfect case study for an essay on how absurdist analogies crack open euphemism in political argument.