to ascertain the real character and qualities, both intellectual and
moral, of the natives of Africa; and, remembering the advantages we
derived in a former instance, from publications which had appeared
before the Slave Trade became a subject of public discussion, we might
be disposed to congratulate ourselves in having access, on the present
occasion, to a work which was published many years before any
proposition had been brought forward for abolishing the Slave Trade.
[Sidenote: Mr. Long’s account of the Negro race.] The publication to
which I allude is Mr. Long’s elaborate History of Jamaica, a work which
has been long regarded as of the highest authority on all West Indian
topics. We may consider it as containing a more fair representation of
the opinion entertained of the Negroes, and of the estimation in which
they were held by the well-informed colonists, than any statements
which, having been subsequently made, may be supposed to have received a
tincture from that discussion. Mr. Long’s work appeared long before the
necessity of vindicating the Slave Trade, and the difficulty of finding
arguments for that purpose had driven the enemies of abolition to the
unworthy expedient of calumniating the African character. Yet we find
this commonly respectable author speaking of the race of Negroes in such
terms, as they who have read the more recent accounts of Africa will
peruse with astonishment, as well as with disgust. Far be it from me to
quote them with any design of injuring the reputation of a work of
established credit. But the passages are in several points of view
highly important, and well deserving of your most serious consideration.
[Sidenote: Extracts from Long’s History of Jamaica.]
“For my own part (says Mr. Long) I think there are extremely potent
reasons for believing that the white and the negro are two distinct
species.” “In general (he goes on) the African negroes are void of
genius, and seem almost incapable of making any progress in civility or
science. They have no plan or system of morality among them. Their
barbarity to their children debases their nature even below that of
brutes. They have no moral sensations; no taste, but for women,
gormandizing and drinking to excess; no wish but to be idle. Their
children, from their tenderest years, are suffered to deliver themselves
up to all that nature suggests to them. Their houses are miserable
cabins. They conceive no pleasure from the most beautiful parts of their
country, preferring the most sterile. Their roads, as they call them,
are mere sheep paths, twice as long as they need be, and almost
impassable. Their country in most parts is one continued wilderness,
beset with briars and thorns.
“They use neither carriages nor beasts of burthen. They are represented
_by all authors_ as the vilest of the human kind, to which they have
little more pretension of resemblance than what arises from their
exterior form.
“In so vast a continent as that of Africa, and in so great a variety of
climates and provinces, we might expect to find a proportionable
diversity among the inhabitants, in regard to their qualifications of
body and mind; strength, agility, industry, and dexterity, on the one
hand; ingenuity, learning, arts and sciences, on the other. But on the
contrary, a general uniformity runs through all these various regions of
people; so that if any difference be found, it is only in degrees of the
same qualities; and, what is more strange, those of the worst kind; it
being a common known proverb, that all people on the globe have some
good as well as ill qualities, except the Africans. Whatever great
personages this country might anciently have produced, and concerning
whom we have no information, they are now everywhere degenerated into a
brutish, ignorant, idle, crafty, bloody, thievish, mistrustful, and
superstitious people, even in those states where we might expect to find
them more polished, humane, docile, and industrious.”—“This brutality
somewhat diminishes when they are imported young, after they become
habituated to clothing, and a regular discipline of life; but many are
never reclaimed, and remain savages, in every sense of the word, to
their latest period. We find them marked with the same bestial manners,
stupidity, and vices, which debase their brethren on the continent, who
seem to be distinguished from the rest of mankind, not in person only,
but in possessing in the abstract every species of inherent turpitude
that is to be found dispersed at large among the rest of the human
creation, with scarce a single feature to extenuate this shade of
character, differing in this particular from all other men; for in other
countries, the most abandoned villain we ever heard of has rarely, if
ever, been known unportioned with some one good quality at least in his
composition.”—“Among so great a number of provinces on this extensive
continent, and among so many millions of people, we have heard but of
one or two insignificant tribes, who comprehended any thing of mechanic
arts, or manufacture; and even these, for the most part, are said to
perform their work in a very bungling and slovenly manner, perhaps not
much better than an oran-outang might with a little pains be brought to
do.”
“Ludicrous as the opinion may seem, I do not think that an oran-outang
husband would be any dishonour to a Hottentot female.”
“Maize, palm-oil, and a little stinking fish, make up the general bill
of fare of the prince and the slave.”
“They esteem the ape species as scarcely their inferiors in humanity.”
“Their hospitality is the result of self-love; they entertain strangers
only in hopes of extracting some service or profit from them.”
“Their corporeal sensations are generally of the grossest frame,” &c.
&c. &c.
Such is Mr. Long’s portrait of the negro character; such was the state
of contempt into which the whole race had fallen, in the estimation of
those who had known them chiefly in that condition of wretchedness and
degradation into which a long continued course of slavery had depressed
them. Can any thing shew more clearly, with what strong prejudices
against the negro race, the minds not only of low uneducated men, but of
a West Indian, whose authority is great, and whose name stands high
among his countrymen, were some years ago at least infected:
consequently they prove with what spirit and temper, even well-informed
men, among the colonists, entered on the consideration of the various
questions involved in the large and complicated discussion concerning
the abolition of the Slave Trade.
[Sidenote: The question of highly important practical tendencies.]
But the subject is of the very first importance in another view; for it
is a truth so clear, that it would be a mere waste of time to prove it
in detail—that our estimate of the intellectual and moral qualities, of
the natural and acquired tempers and feelings, and habits, of any class
of our fellow creatures, will determine our judgment as to what is
necessary to their happiness, and still more as to the treatment they
may reasonably claim at our hands. Now it be remembered, the author,
whose account of the Africans has been just laid before you, was the
very best informed of those on whose views and feelings, respecting the
Negroes, our opponents would have had us entirely rely. Must not the
representations of such witnesses against the Negroes be received with
large abatement, and ought we not to lend ourselves to their suggestions
with considerable diffidence? What judgment would they be likely to form
of the consideration to which, whether in Africa, on shipboard, or in
the West Indies, the negro Slaves were entitled? By how scanty a measure
would their comforts be dispensed to them! And when, in answer to our
inquiries, we were assured that in these several situations, their
treatment was _sufficiently_ mild and humane, and that _due_ attention
was paid to their wants and feelings, might we not reasonably receive
these assurances with some reserve, on calling to mind that they
proceeded from persons whose estimate of _sufficiency_ was drawn from
their calculations of what was _due_ to the wants and feelings, the
pleasures, and pains of a being little above the brute creation; not, of
a Being of talents and passions, of anticipations and recollections, of
social and domestic feelings similar to our own?
[Sidenote: Slave Traders account of the Negro character.]
The account given by the witnesses produced by the Slave Traders, of the
natural and moral qualities of the Negroes, was of the same unfavourable
kind, though considerably less strong in its colouring. I should detain
you too long by stating it in detail. It may suffice to mention, in
general, that the Africans were represented, in respect to civilization
and knowledge, as but very little advanced beyond the rudest state of
savage life. The population was said to be thin, their agriculture in
the lowest state, their only manufacture a species of coarse mat or
cloth. They very rarely used any beasts for draught or burthen, they had
no public roads; no knowledge of letters, or apparent sense of their
value. But the account of their personal qualities was still more
melancholy; because it was such as to leave but slender hopes of their
ever emerging out of this dark and barbarous state. The most respectable
witnesses produced by the Slave Traders, some of whom had resided among
the Africans many years, and on various parts of the coast, declared,
that their stupidity, and still more their indolence, were so firmly
rooted in their nature, as to be absolutely invincible; and, what may
perhaps be justly regarded as indicative of the worst natural
disposition, that they were deficient in domestic and parental
affection.
[Sidenote: Mr. Bryan Edwards’s account.]
Even Mr. Bryan Edwards, though in common more liberal than other
defenders of the Slave Trade, gives in his History of the West Indies a
highly unfavourable account of the African character. It ought, however,
in all fairness, to be urged in his defence, that his judgment of the
Negroes was formed under circumstances highly disadvantageous to them;
being grounded on what he had known and heard of them in our West India
colonies, where their natural character must necessarily have derived a
deep taint from the depraving effects of a long continued state of
slavery. To this cause, indeed, he himself very frankly ascribes most of
the bad qualities which he enumerates. After exhibiting the different
shades of character of the Slaves brought from different parts of
Africa, he goes on to state, what may be deemed the general properties
of the Negro race, and these are of the most debasing and depraving
kind. They are in general distrustful and cowardly; falsehood is one of
the most prominent features in their character; they are prone to theft;
sullen, selfish, unrelenting; and while the softer virtues are seldom
found among them, they are so sunk in dissoluteness and licentiousness,
that the attempt to introduce the ceremony of marriage among them, would
be impracticable to any good purpose. One of the few pleasing traits in
their character is their high veneration for old age.
[Sidenote: Parke’s character of the Negroes.]
After this melancholy picture, it is a relief to the humane mind, to
peruse the accounts of the intellectual and moral dispositions and
character of the Negroes, which have been given by persons who have had
far superior means of information. The chief of them, Mr. Parke, and Mr.
Golberry, were also, from their connections, unfriendly to the
abolition, and cannot therefore be supposed to be tinctured with any of
the prejudices which may be presumed to bias the minds of the avowed
advocates of the negro race. It would be a grateful task to lay before
you such copious extracts, as would give you a full and minute
enumeration of the particulars of the negro character; but my extracts,
to do justice to the subject, would almost fill a volume. I must
therefore refer you to my appendix for a brief specimen of them, and
content myself here with exhibiting the mere outlines of the very
different portrait which has been taken of the Negroes, after a more
familiar and extended survey of their tempers and conduct.
Mr. Parke represents the Africans of the interior as naturally superior,
both in their intellectual and moral endowments, to almost any other
uncivilized nation. He speaks in high terms of their powers of ingenuity
and invention, of their quickness and cheerfulness; of the value which
they set on the learning within their reach, and the price at which they
are willing to acquire it for themselves, or their children; of the
skill which they display in several arts and manufactures. But the
natural character of the Africans rises in our estimation, when, from
considering their intellectual, we take a fair survey of their moral
qualities; of the reverence for truth in which the children are educated
by their mothers, among the Mandingoes, who, let it be observed,
constitute the bulk of the inhabitants in all the vast districts of
Africa visited by Mr. Parke; of their almost universal benevolence,
gentleness, and hospitality; of their courage, and, when they have any
adequate motive to prompt them to work, of their industry and
perseverance; of their parental and filial tenderness, of their social
and domestic affection, of the conjugal fidelity of the women, combined
with great cheerfulness and frankness; of the extraordinary attachment
of the Negroes to their country and home; in some cases, of their
magnanimity, of which two instances are given, scarcely inferior to any
thing which is recorded in Greek or Roman story.
[Sidenote: Golberry’s character of the Negroes.]
Mr. Golberry’s account of the negro character is at least equally
favourable. “The Foulahs, he says, are intelligent and industrious,
fine, strong, brave men; but, from their habitual commerce with the
Moors, they are become savage and cruel. The Mandingoes are well
informed, graceful, and active, and, in their mercantile character,
clever and indefatigable. The Jaloffs are honest, hospitable, generous,
and faithful; their character mild, and inclined to good order and
civilization.” Besides this account of particular nations, he observes
of the Negroes in general, that they have both taste, ingenuity, and
cleverness, and may be reckoned among the most favoured people of
nature. They are, perhaps, the most prolific of all the human species,
which is probably owing to the moderation they in general observe, in
their habits, regimen, and pleasures. He bears, if possible, a still
stronger testimony to the benevolence, hospitality, frankness, and
generosity of the negro character. The mothers, says he, are
passionately fond of their children, and these discover in return great
filial tenderness. The women are always kind and attentive.
[Sidenote: Mr. Winterbottom’s.]
Concerning Mr. Winterbottom’s account, I will here only state, that it
corresponds, in the great essentials of character, with the
representations already given, though it be perhaps scarcely so
favourable to the negro character.
[Sidenote: The Hottentots vindicated.]
Even the poor calumniated Hottentots, who were long regarded as among
the lowest in the scale of being, have at length found respectable and
able advocates. Among the many good qualities which the Hottentot
possesses, there is one, says Mr. Barrow, of which he is master in an
eminent degree, a rigid adherence to truth: he may be considered also as
exempt from stealing. Sir James Craig, when he commanded at the Cape,
attempted to form an African corps, in defiance of the most confident
prediction of the colonists, whose prejudices against the Hottentot race
were scarcely less strong than those of Mr. Long himself. “We were
told,” says Sir James, “that their propensity to drunkenness was so
great, we should never be able to reduce them to order or discipline;
and that the habit of roving was so rooted in their disposition, we must
expect the whole corps would desert, the moment they had received their
clothing.” Both these charges were confuted by experience. Sir James
goes on to remark, “Never were people more contented or more grateful
for the treatment they now receive. We have upwards of three hundred,
who have been with us nine months. It is therefore with the opportunity
of knowing them well, that I venture to pronounce them an intelligent
race of men. All who bear arms exercise well, and understand,
immediately and perfectly, whatever they are taught to perform. Many of
them speak English tolerably well. Of all the qualities that can be
ascribed to a Hottentot, it will little be expected I should expatiate
upon their cleanliness; and yet it is certain, that at this moment our
Hottentot parade would not suffer in a comparison with that of some of
our regular regiments. They are now likewise cleanly in their persons;
the practice of smearing themselves with grease being entirely left off.
I have frequently observed them washing themselves in a rivulet, where
they could have in view no other object but cleanliness.” The poor
Bosjesman Hottentots are also stated as a docile, tractable people, of
innocent manners, and beyond expression grateful to their benefactors.
[Sidenote: Character of Booshuana and Baroloo natives.]
Some later travellers from the Cape of Good Hope, and in the service of
Government, have penetrated into the heart of Africa to a great depth,
but short of the region in which the Slave Trade prevails, and the
account which, both from their own knowledge and from the
representations of others, they give of the natives, is still of the
same encouraging kind.
[Sidenote: Character given of the Negroes by the Abolitionists
witnesses.]
After these accounts, you will not be surprised to hear, that the
representations given of the Africans by the naval officers, and the men
of science before alluded to, were highly favourable. One witness spoke
of the acuteness of their perceptions; another, of the extent of their
memory; a third, of their genius for commerce; others, of their good
workmanship in gold, iron, and leather; the peculiarly excellent texture
of their cloth, and the beautiful and indelible tincture of their dyes.
It was acknowledged that they supplied the ships with many articles of
provision, with wood, and water, and other necessaries. Some spoke in
high terms of their peaceable disposition; all of their cheerfulness and
eminent hospitality.
I have been the more diffuse on this topic, because, though our
commercial connection, with Africa be of so old a date, we have
scarcely, till of late years, had any authentic account of the interior.
In a region so vast, there must be a great variety of nations, and very
different accounts may be adduced of particular countries; accounts not
always, however, of a very authentic kind. But it is highly encouraging,
and it is more than enough to rescue the African race from the unjust
and general stigma which has been cast on it, to know, that later
travellers who have visited the interior, in parts widely distant from
each other, have made such pleasing reports of the intelligence, tempers
and dispositions, habits, and manners of the natives of this vast
continent.
[Sidenote: Yet Africa never was civilized.—Argument resulting from that
fact considered.]
But, notwithstanding all which has been here adduced in favour of the
negro character, I am aware that there exists, not uncommonly, in the
minds even of men of understanding and candour, a strong prejudice
against the African Negroes, on the ground of their never having
advanced to any considerable state of civilization and knowledge, in any
period of the world. Let me be permitted, in the first place, to
consider that position more particularly. They were always, it is
alleged, to a considerable degree barbarous. Still more, in the remotest
times to which our accounts extend, slavery, and even a Slave Trade,
have been found to prevail in Africa. Hence a presumption arises, that
her inhabitants are incapable of civilization, and that Africa cannot
much complain of a practice which has become so congenial to her, and
which seems to arise, not from European avarice, or cruelty, but rather
from the genius and dispositions of her people, or from some
incorrigible vice in her system of laws, institutions, and manners.
That Africa, which contains nearly a third of the habitable globe,
should never at any period have been reclaimed from a state of
comparative barbarism, is, indeed, on the first view, a strange
phenomenon. But without stopping to comment on the precision of that
reasoning which, on this ground, should argue that it is justifiable for
the European nations to make Africa the scene, and her sons the objects
of the Slave Trade, we may confidently affirm, that a considerate review
of the history, origin, and progress of civilization and the arts, in
all ages and countries, will not only explain the difficulty, but will
give us good grounds for believing, that, reasoning from experience, the
interior of Africa is full as much civilized as any other race of men
would have been, if placed in the same situation.
How is it that civilization and the arts grow up in any country? The
reign of law and of civil order must be first established. From law,
says a writer of acute discernment and great historical research, from
law arises security; from security, curiosity; from curiosity,
knowledge. As property is accumulated, industry is excited, a taste for
new gratifications is formed, comforts of all kinds multiply, and the
arts and sciences naturally spring up and flourish in a soil and climate
thus prepared for their reception. Yet, even under these circumstances,
the progress of the arts and sciences would probably be extremely slow,
if a nation were not to import the improvements of former times and
other countries. And we are well warranted, by the experience of all
ages, in laying it down as an incontrovertible position—that the arts
and sciences, knowledge, and civilization, have never yet been found to
be the native growth of any country; but that they have ever been
communicated from one nation to another, from the more to the less
civilized. Now, whence was Africa to receive these valuable presents?
Let us summarily and briefly trace the actual progress of human
civilization from the very earliest times. We learn from the Holy
Scriptures, and the researches of the ablest antiquaries strongly
confirm the supposition, that Mesopotamia was the original seat of the
human race. We know not to what extent the globe had been civilized
before the Flood; but the single family which survived that event,
inhabited the same or an adjacent part of Asia. About a century
afterwards, happened the dispersion of nations, and confusion of
tongues; when different races of men, like streams from one common
fountain, diverged in various directions to people the whole earth.
Without going into minute, and therefore difficult, inquiries, we know
that Assyria and Egypt were the first nations which attained to any
great heights of social improvement. Babylon, the capital of Assyria,
was built about 150 years after the flood, and the Assyrian empire is
supposed to have soon after risen to a high degree of splendour. The
neighbouring province of Egypt, from the mildness of its climate, and
its singular fertility, naturally attracted inhabitants, who, of course,
brought along with them the arts of their native land. It is represented
by the Mosaic writings to have been, about 450 years after the flood, a
flourishing and well regulated kingdom; and all history testifies that
it was one of the earliest seats of the arts and sciences.