would be to live in a country subject to such continual depredations by
night, and such treachery by day. These evils affect the whole condition
of society; they poison the happiness of every family, nay, it may
almost be said of every individual in the community. All the nameless
but sweet enjoyments comprised within the idea of home, to all of which
security is necessary, are at once destroyed; and Parke assures us that
no people taste these pleasures with a higher relish than the Negroes.
Consider the intensity of the sufferings which the Slave Trade occasions
in Africa, and the number of the sufferers; remember throughout what an
immense extent these evils prevail, and the time they have continued.
To this vast mass of African misery, add up all the various evils of the
middle passage. See there the husband and father, wife and mother, who
have been torn from the dearest objects of their affections, and are now
carried away, they know not whither, in their floating prison. Take in,
their never having been before at sea, their confinement, their posture,
with all the other distressing particulars of their situation; is not
too much to say that you see them enduring exquisite bodily suffering.
But, much more, consider the sorrows of the mind; see them dying of a
broken heart, from the loss of their friends and country, from their
remembrance of the past, and their prospect for the future. In this
state forced to bear the coarse brutality of the sailors, and urged by
stripes, with a stomach loathing food, to eat; and with limbs galled
with fetters, to dance; while their hearts are wrung with agony.
Consider then that in every individual Slave ship there are most likely
multitudes of these wretched beings; many of them men, as Mr. Parke
tells us, of some education; some of them men of considerable rank in
their own country: but the whole cargo, as it is hatefully termed,
consists of husbands and wives, of parents and children—all had a
home—all had relatives.
But to the sufferings of the wretched Slaves themselves, we must add
those of the sailors also, who are too often treated with extreme
barbarity. Of the latter, there are not a few who, though their lives
are spared, lose their health, their sight, or the use of their limbs,
not merely from the unwholesome nature of the climate of Africa, but
from various peculiarities attendant on the Slave Trade.
Nor ought we to omit the moral injury which our country sustains from
the number of persons who are rendered ferocious and unfeeling by the
hardening nature of their constant occupation.
It would be difficult to add up the different items, much less to
discover the precise sum of the misery which may fairly be placed to the
account of the Slave Trade in the West Indies. Here, however, let me
first remark, and it ought to have been observed in the case of Africa
likewise, the Slave Trade is justly chargeable with the prevention of
all that domestic happiness and social comfort and prosperity which
would follow from the introduction of the domestic system which it
naturally supersedes. But when we proceed to the positive articles of
this account; when we endeavour to sum up the total of the immense
number of individual sufferers: Again, when to these we add the
sufferings and the waste of our brave defenders, by sea and land, with
the sorrows of their surviving relatives; and when we consider the
unknown amount of evil, which, from the effect on the minds of our
soldiers and sailors, may at some time or other result from this class
of ravages, evil possibly commensurate with the ruin of our country:
When we remember that it is the Slave Trade which prolongs the internal
weakness of our West Indian colonies, that it is this weakness which
invites attack, and thence creates the necessity of defence at such a
profuse expenditure of the lives of our countrymen; and that the
facility of conquering these possessions operates powerfully as a
temptation to our enemies to commence war, with all its unknown miseries
and dangers: By what new denomination shall we in any degree fairly
express the real sum of these several items?
There is still, however, another class of evils on which I have
occasionally touched, which will appear of the highest amount to all
considerate men, to whom the best interests of their country are dear,
and who have been accustomed to trace the operation of those causes
which have led to the decline and fall of nations.[55] These are the
moral evils both of the Slave Trade, and even, still more, because of
greater extent, of the system of West Indian slavery. It is the fashion
of the present day to pay little attention to evils of this class; but
they are not on this account less real or less efficient. Their nature
and force have been acknowledged by all writers of eminence, whether
ancient or modern, who have treated either of the prosperity or decay of
the great nations of antiquity.
The system of slavery, especially of slavery in it’s more hateful forms,
never did nor ever will prevail long in any country, without producing a
most pernicious effect, both on it’s morals, habits, and manners. This
is an invidious topic, on which I will not enlarge; but let it’s amount
be duly estimated by all who are interested for the independence, the
prosperity, or the happiness of their country. When all these various
masses of misery are piled up into one, who shall attempt to take the
dimensions of it’s enormous bulk. Yet we must acknowledge, that from
it’s very size it produces less impression on mankind in general. This
principle may be termed a law of our nature, and we suffer from the
effect of it in every part of our great cause. I firmly believe that it
is here the Slave Trade has found it’s chief security. Had it not been
for the operation of this cause, both Houses of Parliament, I had almost
said the whole nation, would have risen with one indignant effort, and
have forced the Slave Traders to desist from their cruel occupation.
Could we but place even the people of Liverpool themselves, where they
could see with their own eyes the progress, from first to last, of this
series of crimes and cruelties; could we but confine their attention so
that they might have but one object before them at once, and might view
it in all it’s parts distinctly, with all it’s circumstances and
relations, I firmly believe they would themselves abjure that inhuman
traffic for which they are now so ignominiously preeminent.
But the enormous dimensions of this mass of misery are such, that our
organs are not fitted for the contemplation of it; our affections are
not suited to deal with it; we are lost in the immensity of the
prospect; we are distracted by it’s variety. We may see highly probable
reasons why our all wise Creator has so constituted us, that we are more
deeply affected by one single tale of misery, with all the details of
which we are acquainted, than by the greatest accumulation of sufferings
of which the particulars have not fallen under our notice. Could I but
separate this immense aggregate into all its component parts, and
present them one by one to your view, in all their particularity of
wretchedness, you would then have a more just impression of the
immensity of the misery which we wish to terminate. This cannot now be
done; but let us, in concluding our melancholy course, employ a few
moments in taking some family, or some individual Negro, and following
him through all his successive stages of suffering, from his first
becoming the victim of some nightly attack on his dwelling, or from his
being sentenced to slavery for the benefit of those who condemned him,
to the final close of his wretched life. I will not attempt to describe
his sufferings; estimate from your own feelings what must be his, in all
the various situations through which he passes.
Conceive, if you can, the agony with which, as he is hurried away by his
unfeeling captors, he looks back upon the native village which contains
his wife and children who are left behind; or, supposing them to have
been carried off also, with which he sees their sufferings, and looks
forward to the dreadful future; while his own anguish is augmented by
witnessing theirs. Accompany him through his long and painful march to
the coast; behold him, when the powers of nature are almost exhausted by
fatigue and affliction, urged forward like a brute by the lash, or, with
still more bitterness of suffering, seeing the fainting powers of his
wretched wife or daughter roused into fresh exertions by the same savage
discipline.[56] Behold him next brought on shipboard and delivered over
to men, whose colour, appearance, language, are all strange to him,
while every object around must excite terror. If his wretched family
have not been brought away with him, he is tormented by the
consciousness that they are left destitute and unprotected, and that his
eyes will see them no more. If his wife and daughter have been carried
off with him, he sees them dragged away to another part of the ship,
while he is debarred from their society, and often even from the sight
of them; what must be his anguish, from being conscious not only that
they are suffering many of the same evils as himself, but still more,
from knowing that they are exposed to all those brutalities, the idea of
which must be most cutting to a husband or a father; while his misery
becomes more intense, from the consciousness that they are close to him,
though he cannot alleviate their misery, or protect their weakness.
See our wretched family or individual arriving at the destined port, and
then call to mind the abominations of the sale of a negro cargo. See the
wretched individual or family exposed naked like brutes, and the same
methods taken as with their fellow brutes, to ascertain whether or not
their limbs and members are perfect. See them forced to jump or dance,
to prove their agility; or, still more affecting, see them afraid, each
lest the other only should be bought by some particular purchaser, and
therefore displaying their agility, while their hearts are wrung with
anguish, in order to induce the buyer to take them both. Perhaps the
different branches of the family may be bought by different owners; they
may probably be taken to different islands, and the poor hope of wearing
away together the wretched remainder of their lives is disappointed; or,
if they are purchased together, see them taken home to the estate, and
entering upon their course of laborious and bitter degradation; while,
looking forward to the future, not a single ray of hope breaks in to
cheer the prospect, no hope of any alleviation of drudgery or
degradation for them or for their children, for ever! Suppose our
wretched Slave at length reduced to the level of his condition, and,
either with his own family or with a new one, suppose him to have his
hard lot in some little measure mitigated by a very slight taste of
domestic and social comforts. It might well be thought, that, except for
the hardships and sufferings inseparable from such a state of slavery,
where even the necessaries of life must depend on an owner’s affluence,
in a country where we know that an immense majority are extremely
embarrassed in their affairs—the bitterness of death would be now past;
but a negro Slave does not die so easily; again probably, possibly again
and again, he is to be subjected to the brutalities of a sale, and to
the pains of separation from all that are most dear to him.[57] He is
taken perhaps to form a new settlement, and forced to the severe labour
of clearing land, in a pestilential soil and climate, without any of
those little accommodations which ingenious and industrious poverty
might in a course of years have collected around him, in his old
habitation. This, however, if a severe is still a short suffering, from
which death soon releases him, and is far preferable to the sad fate of
those, who linger out the tedious remainder of life, separated from all
who have known them in their better days, and without any of those
kindly props to lean upon, which the merciful ordainer of all things has
provided, for sustaining the weakness, and mitigating the sorrows of
age. To look around, and to see not a single face of friendship or
relationship, no eye to cheer, no staff to lean upon; surely the
comfortless close of such a Negro’s comfortless life, though not of
equal intensity of suffering with many of the evils of the former scenes
through which he has passed, is yet, from the deep tinge and uniform
melancholy of its colouring, as affecting a state, to the humane mind,
as any whatever in a life abounding in all the varieties of human
wretchedness.
[Sidenote: Conclusion.]
Such from first to last is the condition of human existence, to which
that abhorred traffic the Slave Trade annually consigns many thousands
of our unoffending fellow creatures. This is a most astonishing
phenomenon, when we consider the general character of the people of this
country; when we call to mind the unparalleled benevolence and
liberality which are found among us; when we take into account, that not
a new species of distress can be pointed out, but that almost
immediately some meeting takes place, some society is formed, for
preventing it. Is it not utterly astonishing, that Great Britain should
have been the prime agents in carrying on this trade of blood? Posterity
will scarcely believe it. We, the happiest, render the Africans the most
miserable of mankind!
It is a humiliating and an aweful, but, I fear, it is an undoubted
truth; that it is in part, at least, because we ourselves overflow with
comforts, that we are so indifferent to the happiness of this vast
portion of our fellow creatures. It is, in our corrupted nature, too
naturally the effect of prosperity to harden the heart. Yet I firmly
believe, that could many of our opponents see with their own eyes but a
slight sample of the miseries the Slave Trade occasions, they would
themselves be eager for its termination. But, alas, Africa and its
miseries are out of sight. Business, pleasure, engagements, the
interests and feelings of the hour, leave little time for reflection,
and therefore little access to the feelings. Sympathy here likewise
operates against us. For we are readily led to sympathize with a great
West Indian Proprietor; but not with a miserable negro Slave. Yet, let
me ask (in this happy country the case cannot really happen), what
should we think of any man, who, for some even considerable and clear,
much more for any dubious interest, was to make a single family as
miserable as the Slave Trade renders thousands of families every year?
If he were to keep them month after month and year after year in
continual alarm, from the apprehension of some nightly attack; if at
length the apprehension were to be realized, the attack to be made, and
the wretched beings, flying from the flames, were to be seized and
carried off into slavery; if he were thus to tear a father or mother
from their children, or to seize unawares and hurry away some helpless
children from their parents; What would be his remorse, if he had even
innocently been the occasion of rendering a before happy family the
scene of lasting sorrow and misery? What should we think of any man, who
would not be forward to dry the tears of such a family, and restore
them, if possible, to comfort, or who would not willingly expose himself
to danger, in order to prevent their suffering such a miserable fate.
Let every one then remember, that, by giving his vote for the abolition
of the Slave Trade, he will prevent the perpetration of innumerable
crimes, like the worst of those here mentioned, and the suffering of the
bitterest of these miseries. How few, if one single man could be found,
who would support the Slave Trade, were it but possible to bring before
each individual, of the whole number of those who may vote for it’s
continuance, his own specific share of the whole mass of crimes and
miseries. The exact amount, either way, will one day be known!
Forgive me if I seem still to linger; if I appear unwilling to conclude.
When I call to mind the number and the magnitude of the interests which
are at stake, I know not how to desist, while any fresh argument remains
to be used, while any consideration not as yet suggested occurs to me,
by which I may enforce my intercession in behalf of the most injured of
the human race. But though the mind be naturally led to the Africans, as
the greatest sufferers, yet, unless the Scripture be a forgery, it is
not their cause only that I am pleading, but the cause of my Country.
Yet let me not here be misconceived. It is not that I expect any visible
and supernatural effects of the Divine vengeance; though, not to listen
with seriousness to the accounts which have been brought us of late
years from the western hemisphere, as to a probable intimation of the
Divine displeasure, would be to resolve to shut our ears against the
warning voice of Providence. To mention no other particulars, a disease
new in it’s kind, and almost without example destructive in its ravages,
has been for some time raging in those very colonies which are the chief
supporters of the traffic in human beings; a disease concerning which we
scarcely know any thing, but that it does not affect the Negro race, and
that we first heard of it after the horrors of the Slave Trade had been
completely developed in the House of Commons, but developed in vain.
But it is often rather in the way of a gradual decline, than of violent
and sudden shocks, that national crimes are punished. I must frankly
therefore confess to you, that in the case of my Country’s prosperity or
decline, my hopes and fears are not the sport of every passing rumour;
nor do they rise or fall materially, according to the successive reports
we may receive of the defeats or victories of Bonaparte. This
consideration opens the view into a wide field, and I must abstain from
so much as setting my foot on it. I will only remark, that a country
circumstanced in all respects like this, under an auspicious Providence,
and using our various resources with energy and wisdom, has no cause
whatever for despondency. But he who has looked with any care into the
page of history, will acknowledge, that when nations are prepared for
their fall, human instruments will not be wanting to effect it; and,
left man, vain man, so apt to overrate the powers and achievements of
human agents, should ascribe the subjugation of the Romans to the
consummate policy and powers of a Julius Cæsar, their slavery shall be
completed by the unwarlike Augustus, and shall remain entire under the
hateful tyranny of Tiberius, and throughout all the varieties of their
successive masters. Thus it is, that, most commonly by the operation of
natural causes, and in the way of natural consequences, Providence
governs the world. But if we are not blind to the course of human
events, as well as utterly deaf to the plain instructions of Revelation,
we must believe that a continued course of wickedness, oppression, and
cruelty, obstinately maintained in spite of the fullest knowledge and
the loudest warnings, must infallibly bring down upon us the heaviest
judgments of the Almighty. We may ascribe our fall to weak councils, or
unskilful generals; to a factious and over-burthened people; to storms
which waste our fleets, to diseases which thin our armies; to mutiny
among our soldiers and sailors, which may even turn against us our own
force; to the diminution of our revenues and the excessive increase of
our debt: men may complain on one side of a venal ministry, on the other
of a factious opposition; while amid mutual recriminations, the nation
is gradually verging to it’s fate. Providence will easily provide means
for the accomplishment of it’s own purposes. It cannot be denied, that
there are circumstances in the situation of this Country, which,
reasoning from experience, we must call marks of a declining empire; but
we have, as I firmly believe, the means within ourselves of arresting
the progress of this decline. We have been eminently blessed; we have
been long spared; Let us not presume too far on the forbearance of the
Almighty.
Broomfield,
Jan. 28th, 1807.
Printed by Luke Hansard & Sons,
near Lincoln’s Inn Fields
APPENDIX.
_AFRICA._
EXTRACTS FROM THE OLDER AUTHORS.
_From Travels of the Sieur d’ Elbée, sent by the French W. I. Company to
Ardrah, in 1670.—Astley’s Voyages, vol. iii._
[Sidenote: Depredatory Acts occasioned by the Slave Trade.]
Though the king has a great number of wives, yet but one has the title
of queen; who is she that bears him the first son. Her authority over
the rest, whom she treats rather as her servants, than as her
companions, is so great, that she sometimes sells them for slaves,
without consulting the king, who is forced to wink at the matter. An
affair of this kind happened while the Sieur d’ Elbée traded here. The
queen, having been refused by the king some goods or jewels she had an
inclination for, ordered them up privately, and in exchange sent eight
of his wives to the factory, who were immediately stamped with the
Company’s mark, and sent on board.
These poor princesses had sunk under so severe a stroke, if the Sieur d’
Elbée had not shewn them some distinction, by treating them in a kind
manner; so he carried them in good health to Martinico.—(p. 72.)
_Extract from a Voyage to Congo, and other countries, in 1682, from
Astley’s Voyages, vol. iii. by Jerom Merolla, &c._
He, said he, was sure it was not the intention of the duke (the Duke of
York) that christians should be bought and sold as slaves; nor that such
as he (meaning the captain) should be allowed not only to trade, but to
rob and infest the shores wherever they came, in the same manner as
another English captain had done there the year before; who, as soon as
he had taken in all his lading, fell to wasting the country, and forced
away many of the natives into slavery, and killed many others whom he
could not get away.—(p. 174.)
_Bosman’s description of Guinea, about 1690 to 1700, in Astley’s
voyages, vol. iii._
Coto Coast.—Their trade is that of slaves, of which they are able
sometimes to deliver a good number, but never enough to load a ship.
These they chiefly steal from the inland country. But this commerce is
uncertain; in some years there are no slaves to be had, the Europeans
having no settlement here. (p. 2.)—Their most profitable trade is
stealing men inland, whom they sell to the Europeans.—(p. 3.)
The same author says, that the people of little Popo depend chiefly on
plunder, and the slave trade, in both which they exceed those of Coto;
for, being endowed with a much larger share of courage, they rob more
successfully; although to freight a ship with slaves, requires some
months attendance. In 1697, the author could get only three slaves here
in three days time, but they promised him two hundred in three days
more; which not caring to trust to he sailed to Whidah. There he learnt
that they had succeeded so well in their incursions, as to bring down
above two hundred; which, for want of other ships, they were obliged to
sell to the Portuguese.—(p. 4.)
Philips informs us that the Whidah blacks are constantly at war with the
Ardrah and Allampo men, the Quamboors and Achims. All the plunder is men
and women, to sell for slaves.—(p. 53.)
_Sieur Brüe’s (many years Director General of the French Senegal
Company, and who resided in Africa eleven years) Voyage to the Isles of
Bissas and Bissagos, on the Western Coast of Africa, in 1701;—from
Astley’s Voyages, Vol. ii._