coasts of Syria, whose advances towards refinement appear to have been
great, and commercial opulence considerable. They gradually made
settlements in the islands and on the shores of the Mediterranean. By
them, the first rudiments of civilization, above all, the art of
alphabetical writing, were conveyed to Greece, the various inhabitants
of which were then in a far ruder state than most of the African nations
in the present day. They are said to have been cannibals, and to have
been ignorant even of the use of fire. Indeed, their barbarous state,
had it not been proved by positive testimony, might have been almost
inferred, from the single circumstance, of their assigning divine
honours to him who reclaimed them from living on acorns and other
spontaneous fruits of the earth, and taught them to cultivate the ground
for corn. Greece, as is justly observed by Mr. Hume, was in a situation
the most favourable of all others to improvements of every kind,
especially in the arts and sciences. It was divided into a number of
little independent communities, connected by commerce and policy, and
exciting each other by mutual competition to those heights of excellence
to which they at length attained, and which, in the arts of painting,
sculpture, architecture, poetry, and oratory, have perhaps never since
been reached by any other nation. About 150 years before Christ, Greece
was subdued by the Romans, who thence derived their civilization and
knowledge. By the extension of the Roman arms over almost the whole of
Europe, the seeds of civilization were first sown in our northern
regions, till then immersed in darkness and barbarism; and they sprung
up and flourished during the order and security which, previous to the
irruption of the northern swarms, prevailed for some centuries
throughout the Roman empire. Such was the state of Europe.
In Asia also, the progress of the Roman arms was considerable, and their
empire extensive: there were, besides, other great and populous nations,
which, from their connection with the earliest seats of civilization,
had attained to various degrees of social refinement. But of Africa,
those parts alone which border on the Mediterranean Sea had been settled
by colonies from any civilized nation. This will not appear
extraordinary, if we consider the geographical circumstances of that
quarter of the globe, and, still more, the low state of navigation among
the ancients. Their knowledge of navigation was so imperfect, that they
scarcely ever ventured out of sight of land; and the account of the
Phœnicians having penetrated into the ocean, and having found a way into
the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, although there now seems
reason to believe its truth, was in general regarded as bearing on it’s
very face it’s own contradiction. The Romans had therefore no access by
the ocean to the interior of Africa; and it was separated from the
provinces bordering on the Mediterranean by an immense sea of sandy
desert, near nine hundred miles from north to south, and twice that
extent from east to west, beyond which, though a few adventurous parties
might venture to penetrate, there was nothing of the established
regularity and order of a Roman province. The very tales which were told
of the inhabitants of these districts, sufficiently denote the imperfect
acquaintance and limited intercourse which subsisted with them.
Hitherto, then, how or whence was civilization to find its way into the
interior of Africa?
Next, the Northern nations, who, seeking for a more genial climate and a
more fertile soil, in the finest provinces of both the eastern and
western empire, overran the civilized world in the fifth century after
Christ, were under no temptations to extend their settlements beyond
those natural barriers which had formed the boundaries of the Roman
conquests. While the coasts of the Mediterranean therefore were
throughout ravaged and colonized, the interior of Africa was still
neglected.
At length the all-conquering followers of Mahomet issued forth, and,
after desolating the fine African provinces which were subject to Rome,
some of their adventurous bands seem to have penetrated in various
quarters into the interior, and, occupying the banks of one of the
finest rivers, to have planted themselves, in greater or less numbers,
beyond the immense desert which forms the northern boundary of interior
Africa. But it should be remembered, that while the Mahometans, who
overran the various provinces of both the eastern and western empires,
became civilized by the nations they subdued, as Rome had been before by
her conquest of Greece, so that they soon attained to a great degree of
knowledge and refinement; the tribes which planted themselves in Africa,
finding only nations as illiterate and as unpolished as themselves,
retained all their original barbarism; while their ferocious tempers and
habits, and their intolerant tenets, led them to keep down their negro
subjects in a state of grievous subjection, and prevented that secure
enjoyment of person and property which prompts men to industry, by
securing to them the enjoyment and use of what they have acquired, and
is indispensably necessary for enabling the mind to exercise its powers
with freedom. Here, perhaps however, the first faint beams of knowledge
and civilization shot into the darkness of the negro nations; and it is
remarkable, that, barbarous as were the first Mahometan settlers of
interior Africa, and hostile to all improvement as is the genius of
Mahometanism, yet such is the effect of any regular government, that in
those districts in which the Mahometans either possess the entire
government, or a very considerable influence over it, there were many
centuries ago great and populous cities, provinces not ill cultivated,
and a considerable degree of social order and civilization.
It may therefore be boldly affirmed, that the interior, to which may be
added the western coast of Africa to the south of the great desert,
never enjoyed any of that intercourse with more polished nations,
without which no nation on earth is known ever to have attained to any
high degree of civilization; and that, contemptuously as we and the
other civilized nations of Europe now speak of the Africans, had we been
left in their situation, we should probably have been not more civilized
than themselves.
Let the case be put, that the interior of Africa had been made by the
Almighty the cradle of the world—that issuing thence, instead of from
the north-western part of Asia, the several streams of nations had
pervaded and settled the whole of that extensive continent—that the
banks of the Niger, not less fertile than those of the Euphrates or the
Nile, had been the seat of the first great empire—that the kingdoms of
Tombuctoo and Houssa had been the Assyria and Egypt of Africa, and that
the arts and sciences had been communicated to a cluster of little
independent states, and, under the same favourable circumstances, had
been carried to the same heights of excellence as that which they
attained in European Greece—that these had been however in their turn
swallowed up, together with the whole of that vast continent, by the
arms of a single nation, the Romans of Africa, under the shelter of
whose established dominion the various nations throughout that spacious
extent, enjoying the blessings of civil order and security, the natural
consequence had followed, that in every quarter the arts and sciences
had sprung up and flourished—Might not our northern countries have been
then in the same state of comparative barbarism in which Africa now
lies? Might not some African philosopher, proud of his superior
accomplishments, have made it a question, whether those wretched whites,
the very outcasts of nature, who were banished to the cold regions of
the north, were capable of civilization? And thus, might not a Slave
Trade in Europeans, aye, in Britons, have then been justified by those
sable reasoners, on precisely the same grounds as those on which the
African Slave Trade is now supported?
However the last supposition may mortify our pride, it will appear less
monstrous to those who recollect, that not only in ancient times the
wisest among the Greeks considered the barbarians, including all the
inhabitants of our quarter of the earth, as expressly intended by nature
to be their slaves; not only that the Romans regularly sold into slavery
all the captives whom they took in the wars, by which on all sides they
gradually extended their empire till it was almost commensurate with the
then known world; but that our own island long furnished it’s share
towards the supply of the Roman market. Even at a later period of our
history, we Englishmen have been the subjects of a Slave Trade, for
which it is remarkable that the city of Bristol[11] was the grand
emporium. That ancient city has now, I trust for the last time, retired
from that guilty commerce.
In fact we know from history, that the great principle, of the demand
producing the supply, has been amply verified in this instance, and that
when countries in which slavery has been tolerated, have been
sufficiently affluent to purchase Slaves, the Slaves have been caught
and brought, like other wild animals, from the less civilized regions of
the earth, where the inhabitants were less secure against foreign
invaders, or against internal violence. Had not our island therefore
been conquered by the Romans, who lodged in the soil the seeds of
civilization which sprung up afterwards, when circumstances favoured
their growth; and had the neighbouring provinces on the continent, from
which otherwise the rays of knowledge might have enlightened us,
remained also unsubdued; what reason is there to suppose that we, any
more than the inhabitants of any other savage country, should now be a
civilized nation? than, for instance, the whole continent of America
before it was settled by Europeans? than the islands in the Pacific
Ocean to this day?
But it may be even affirmed, that the Africans, without the advantages
to be derived from an intercourse with polished nations, have made
greater advancements towards civilization than perhaps any other
uncivilized people on earth. Nor is this the state of those nations
only, which, from their having received some tincture of the Mussulman
tenets, may be supposed to have owed their improvement to their
Mahometan invaders, but in a considerable degree in those countries also
where there are no traces whatever of any such connection.
Let us appeal to experience. In what state was Britain herself, when
first visited by the Romans? More barbarous than many of the African
kingdoms in the present day. Look to the aboriginal inhabitants of both
the northern and southern continents of the new world, both when America
was first discovered, and at the present day, with the exception,
perhaps, of only the kingdom of Mexico. Look to New Holland, a tract of
country as great as all Europe; look to Madagascar, to Borneo, to
Sumatra, to the other islands in the Indian seas, or to those of the
Pacific Ocean. Are not the Africans far more civilized than any of
these? The fact is undeniable. Instead of a miserable race of wretched
savages, thinly scattered over countries of immense extent; destitute
almost of every art and manufacture (this is the condition of the
greater part of the nations above specified), we find the Africans, in
the interior, in the state of society which has been found, from
history, next to precede the full enjoyment of all civil and social
blessings; the inhabitants of cities and of the country mutually
contributing towards each others’ support; political and civil rights
recognized both by law and practice; natural advantages discerned, and
turned to account; both agriculture, and, still more, manufactures,
carried to a tolerable state of improvement; the population in some
countries very considerable; and a strong sense of the value of
knowledge, and an earnest desire of obtaining it. How great is the
progress which the Africans have made compared with the scanty
advantages they could derive from their barbarous Mahometan invaders!
But it has been the peculiar misery of Africa, that nations, already the
most civilized, finding her in the state which has been described,
instead of producing any such effects as might be hoped for from a
commercial connection between a less and a more civilized people;
instead of imparting to the former the superior knowledge and
improvements of the latter; instead of awakening the dormant powers of
the human mind, of calling forth new exertions of industry, and thus
leading to a constant progression of new wants, desires, and tastes; to
the acquisition of property, to the acquisition of capital, to the
multiplication of comforts, and, by the more firm establishment of law
and order, to that security and quiet, in which knowledge and the arts
naturally grow up and flourish: instead of all these effects; it has
been the sad fate of Africa, that when she did enter into an intercourse
with polished nations, it was an intercourse of such a nature, as,
instead of polishing and improving, has tended not merely to retard her
natural progress, but to deprave and darken, and, if such a new term
might be used where unhappily the novelty of the occurrence compels us
to resort to one, to barbarize her wretched inhabitants.
[Sidenote: New phenomenon: interior of Africa more civilized than the
coast.]
And now we are prepared both to admit and to understand a fact, which,
though found to take place universally in Africa, is contrary to all
former experience. In reviewing the moral history of man, and
contemplating his progress from ignorance and barbarism, to the
knowledge and comforts of a state of social refinement, it has been
almost invariably found, that the sea coasts and the banks of navigable
rivers, those districts which from their situation had most intercourse
with more polished nations, have been the earliest civilized. In them,
civil order, and social improvement, agriculture, industry, and at
length the arts and sciences, have first flourished, and they have by
degrees extended themselves into more inland regions. But the very
reverse is the case in Africa. There, the countries on the coast are in
a state of utter ignorance and barbarism, which also are always found to
be the greatest where the intercourse with the Europeans has been the
longest and most intimate;—while the interior countries, where not the
face of a white man was ever seen, are far more advanced in the comforts
and improvements of social life.
This is so extraordinary a phenomenon, and it points out so clearly the
pernicious effects of the Slave Trade on the prosperity of Africa, that
it deserves the most serious attention. However extraordinary the
statement may appear, it is confirmed by the unvarying testimony of all
African travellers. Such is the result of the experience of Mr. Parke,
who penetrated deep into Africa in one part; such is that of Mr.
Winterbottom, who travelled about 200 miles inland in another: and the
same extraordinary fact has since received a most striking confirmation,
in the accounts, before recited, of the Booshuana and Baroloo nations.
Surely more than enough has been stated, to shew how far the present
state of Africa is from furnishing any just grounds for believing that
the Africans are incapable of civilization. Our only cause for wonder
is, not that on the coast, where all is anarchy and insecurity, the
inhabitants should have gradually declined from the state of
civilization to which they had attained, and should have at length sunk
into a state of profound ignorance and barbarism; for they have long
been in circumstances which have been ever found utterly incompatible
with the rise and progress of civilization and knowledge; the more just
subject of astonishment is, that the kingdoms in the interior should
still be found in a condition of so much civil order and improvement, in
spite of the pernicious effects of the Slave Trade on their moral and
social state. But, through the gracious ordination of Heaven, the
political, like the natural body, can exist under severe and harassing
disorders. They may materially injure its health and comfort, and yet
not utterly destroy it. Thus the evils which the interior countries
suffer from the Slave Trade, are great and many; but their effects are
not, as they commonly are on the coast, such as to break up the very
foundations of society, and destroy the cohesion of its elementary
parts. In the interior, the Slave Trade exercises powers of destruction
which justly entitle it to the character of one of the greatest scourges
of the human race. But it is on the coast that it reaches its full
dimensions, and attains to the highest point of its detestable
pre-eminence.
But if the foregoing remarks prove plainly that our Slave dealers have
no just grounds for arguing, from the present uncivilized state of the
coast, that it is incapable of civilization; surely we cannot but be
astonished at the finished assurance, as well as the consummate
injustice and cruelty, with which they would charge on the natural
constitution and character of the natives of Africa, that very barbarism
of which they themselves are the authors; and not only so, but which,
after having produced it, they urge on us as a plea for continuing that
wretched land under the same dreadful interdict, not only from all the
comforts of the civilized state, but from all the charities of life;
from all virtue and all happiness; sealing her up for ever in bondage,
ignorance, and blood.
You have been detained, I fear, far too long before this melancholy
picture; and yet I am almost ashamed of apologizing for prolixity, when
I consider what “a world of woes” it is which I have been exhibiting to
your view.
[Sidenote: Slave Traders’ argument that the Negroes were at home in a
worse state of slavery.]
When men began to question the soundness of that logic, which grounded
the right to carry off the natives of Africa into slavery, on their
state of barbarism and ignorance; and still more, when it was retorted,
that, even granting the premises, that the Africans were thus dark and
savage; the conclusion of a Christian reasoner ought naturally to be,
that it was the duty of more favoured nations to civilize and enlighten,
not to oppress and enslave, them; another set of arguments was brought
forth; that two-thirds, or perhaps three-fourths, of the Africans were
Slaves in their own country; and not only so, but that partly from the
cruel and bloody superstitions, partly from the political despotism
common in Africa, their state was so wretched at home, (the very worst
West Indian slavery, as Mr. Edwards affirms, being infinitely preferable
to the very best in Africa) that, independently on any motives of
interest, humanity alone would prompt us to transport them from such a
condition of misery and degradation, to the comparative Paradise of West
Indian servitude. [Sidenote: The assertion answered and refuted.] To all
this the reply was obvious, that we had no right to make men happy
against their will; and that whatever effect such an argument might have
had on us, if urged from African lips, yet that it came before us in a
very suspicious shape, when proceeding from those of a West Indian. But
since all the above allegations, however unsatisfactory on grounds of
justice, must be acknowledged, to have some place in determining the
practical effect of the Slave Trade, on the happiness of the Africans
themselves; it may not be improper to observe, that these assertions
also are utterly disproved by Mr. Parke, and by other recent travellers,
no less than by the witnesses produced by the Abolitionists.
[Sidenote: African Slaves real state.]
The slavery of Africa appeared, in truth, to be a species of feudal or
rather of patriarchal vassalage. The Slaves could not be sold by their
masters but for crimes; not without the form of a trial, nor, in several
parts, even without the verdict of a jury. They were described as
sitting with their masters, like members of the same family, in
primitive simplicity and comfort. “In all the laborious occupations
which Mr. Parke describes, both agricultural and manufacturing, the
Master and the Slave work together without any distinction of
superiority.” It appears also, from a passage in Parke, that Master and
Slave stand towards each other in a parental and filial relation: “Have
I not served you—” said an African, who had served Parke in the capacity
of a domestic Slave, “Have I not served you as if you had been to me a
father and a master?” Indeed it was the more ill-advised to make any
comparison between the slavery of Africa and of the West Indies, because
even the witnesses of our opponents give much the same account of the
condition of the African Slaves.
These remarks ought ever to be borne in mind in all our considerations
and reasonings concerning the state of society in Africa. They are
sometimes, however, forgotten by the very writers themselves by whom
they have been made. Our opponents have availed themselves of the
ambiguities of language; and the state of these domestic Slaves, who are
styled the bulk of the African population, is spoken of in terms
applicable only to the condition of those wretched beings who are
destined for the Slave market, and who are waiting in fetters for a
purchaser. The existence of this milder species of vassalage may even
facilitate the complete civilization of the negro nations, by having
familiarized their minds to the gradations of rank, and by having
accustomed them to submit to the restraints of social life, and to be
controlled by the authority of law and custom.
[Sidenote: Opponents argument from the cruelty of the African despots,
and particularly from those of the King of Dahomy.]
Much use was likewise attempted to be made of the cruelties of some of
the African monarchs, and especially of a certain king of Dahomy. “It
was mercy to the poor Negroes to rescue them from such barbarities.” But
the argument was only a proof of the wretched straits to which our
opponents must be reduced, when they called in the aid of such an
auxiliary. Yet was this argument urged with a grave face by men of
education and intelligence; and it may therefore deserve a serious,
though a brief answer. It is probably true that the kingdom of Dahomy
had the misfortune to be governed by a cruel tyrant. His invasion of the
neighbouring kingdom of Whidah, was attended with a dreadful slaughter;
and it may be fact, that, like a celebrated oriental conqueror, Nadir
Shah, he thatched his palace with the heads of his prisoners. His
cruelties, and still more those of the Dahoman monarchs in general, must
however have been excessively exaggerated, since Mr. Devaynes, whose
personal knowledge of Dahomy was greater than that of any other person,
and who, though not favourably inclined to our cause, delivered his
evidence with great frankness and candour, declared that the Dahomans
were a very happy people. But, not to insist on the unfairness of
attempting to justify the Slave Trade in general, by the cruelties said
to be practised in one particular district, which constitutes not
perhaps a fiftieth part of the region from which the Slaves are
supplied; not to urge, moreover, that, but for the Slave Trade, this
whole system of superstition would probably have been ere now at an end;
the cruelties of the Dahoman court are the effect of the native
superstitions, and it therefore seems very doubtful, whether or not the
Slave Trade lessens the number of the victims: while, as the very
witness, who dwelt most strongly on this argument, himself allowed; it
leaves their place, by having taken off the convicts who would otherwise
have been sacrificed, to be supplied by innocent individuals. But, what
will you say, when you hear that, as Atkins[12] informs us, the
cruelties practised in the invasion of Whidah were committed by him in a
war undertaken with a view of punishing the adjacent nation, for having
stolen away some of his subjects, for the purpose of selling them for
Slaves? Thus, it appears, that to the Slave Trade itself is fairly to be
imputed this greatest of all recorded instances of the cruelties of an
African warfare, that very instance on which our opponents have relied.
[Sidenote: The Slaves brought to the coast for sale would be massacred
in case of abolition.]