Slavery existed in Britain when history commenced the records of that
island. It was there found in a state and condition predicated upon the
same causes by which its existence is now continued and perpetuated in
Africa. But as early as the year 692–3 A.D., the Witna-Gemot, convoked
by Ina, began to manifest a more elevated condition of the Britons.
Without abolishing slavery, they regulated its government, ameliorated
the old practice of death or slavery being the universal award of
conquest; by submission and baptism the captive was acknowledged to
merit some consideration; life, and, in some cases, property were
protected against the rapacity of the conqueror; the child was secured
against the mere avarice of the savage parent, and heavy punishment was
announced against him who should sell his countryman, whether
malefactor, slave, or not, to any foreign master.
He who has the curiosity to notice the steps by which the Britons
emerged from savage life, in connection with their condition of slavery,
may do well to examine the works of William of Malmsbury, Simeon of
Durham, Bede, Alcuin, Wilkins, Huntingdon, Hoveden, Lingard, and Wilton.
But he will not find the statutes of the monarchies succeeding Ina free
from these enactments until he shall come down near the fourteenth
century. Thus, generations passed away before these statutes came to be
regarded with general respect. National regeneration has ever been thus
slow. Thus, savage life has ever put to death the captive; while we find
that slavery, among such tribes, has ever been introduced as a merciful
provision in its stead, and is surely a proof of one step towards a more
elevated state of moral improvement. But in the case of Britain and the
whole of Europe, the slave was of the same original stock with the
master; he, therefore, presented no physical impediment to amalgamation,
by which has been brought about whatever of equality now exists among
their descendants.
But in the close of this study, we propose to take some notice of the
arguments of another most distinguished writer in favour of the
abolition of slavery, as it now affects the African race.
In 1777, the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote his argument in favour
of the freedom of the negro slave who accompanied his master from
Jamaica to Scotland, and who there brought suit in the Court of Sessions
for his freedom. This argument has been deemed by so many to be
unanswerable, and ever since that time so generally used as a _seed
argument_ in the propagation of abolition doctrines, that we feel it
worthy of notice and examination.
Johnson was a bitter opponent of negro slavery; yet, strange, he ever
advocated the justice of reducing the American colonies and the West
India Islands to the most abject condition of political slavery to the
British crown. This system is fully advocated, and garnished by his
sarcasm and ridicule, in his famous work, entitled “Taxation no
Tyranny.” “How is it,” says he, “that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of negroes.”
Not long after he wrote _this_ argument, on the occasion of a
dinner-party at Dilly’s, he said, “I am willing to love all mankind,
_except an American_;” whereupon, adds his biographer, “he breathed out
threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, robbers, pirates, and
exclaiming, he’d burn and destroy them.”
Some knowledge of a man’s peculiar notions relevant to a subject will
often aid the mind in a proper estimate of the value of his opinion and
judgment concerning correlative matters. His biographer says—
“I record Dr. Johnson’s argument fairly upon this particular case;” * *
* “but I beg leave to enter my most solemn protest against his general
doctrine with respect to the slave-trade; for I will most resolutely say
that his unfavourable notion of it was owing to prejudice, and imperfect
or false information. The wild and dangerous attempt, which has for some
time been persisted in, to obtain an act of the legislature to abolish
so very important and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must
have been crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots who
vainly took the lead in it, made the vast body of the planters,
merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved in the
trade, reasonably enough suppose that there would be no danger. The
encouragement which the attempt has received excites my wonder and
indignation; and though some men of superior abilities have supported
it, whether from a love of temporary popularity when prosperous, or a
love of general mischief when desperate, my opinion is unshaken. To
abolish a _status_, which in all ages God has sanctioned and man has
continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of
fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to African savages, a
portion of whom it saves from massacre or intolerable bondage in their
own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life.”
_Boswell’s Life of Johnson_, vol. ii. pp. 132, 133.