Part 18

But they who thus urge on us the Divine toleration of slavery under the Jewish Theocracy, should remember that the Jews themselves were expressly commanded not to retain any of _their own nation_, any of their _brethren_ in slavery, except as a punishment, or by their own consent; and even these were to be set free on the return of the sabbatical, or the seventh year. Inasmuch therefore, as we are repeatedly and expressly told that Christ has done away all distinctions of nations, and made all mankind one great family, all our fellow creatures are now our brethren; and therefore the very principles and spirit of the Jewish law itself would forbid our keeping the Africans, any more than our own fellow subjects, in a state of slavery. But even supposing, contrary to the fact, that our opponents had succeeded in proving that the Slave Trade was not contrary to the Jewish law, this would only prove that they would be entitled to carry it on if they were Jews, and could, like the Jews, produce satisfactory proof that they were the chosen people of God. But really it would be consuming your time to no purpose, to enter into a formal proof, that fraud, rapine, and cruelty, as contrary to that religion, which commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to do to others as we would have them do to us. I cannot persuade myself that our opponents are serious in using this argument, and therefore I will proceed no farther with this discussion. Besides, even granting that it were possible for any of them to be seriously convinced that Christianity does not prohibit the Slave Trade, I should still have no great encouragement to proceed, for,—it may be prejudice, but I cannot persuade myself that they are so much under the practical influence of religion, that if we should convince their understandings, we should alter their conduct. [Sidenote: Other Considerations which enforce the necessity of abolition.] After having thus stated the various grounds on which our opponents argued against the abolition of the Slave Trade, it still however remains for me to mention two or three additional considerations. For want of time I shall not dwell long on them. But let me recommend them to your most serious reflection, for they are of unspeakable importance. It is not using too strong language to affirm, that if all the arguments which have been hitherto adduced in support of the abolition of the Slave Trade, were weak and unsatisfactory, the measure is urged on us by these considerations alone, with such commanding force, that it would deserve the name of infatuation not to agree to it, and that on grounds not merely of abstract right and duty, but of regard for the well-being of our West Indian Colonies themselves, and for the prosperity of the British Empire.

[Sidenote: Insurrections:—danger of.]

The first consideration which I shall mention is that of a danger of unspeakable amount, to which at length, though surely somewhat too late, even those who have been most blinded by prejudice begin to open their eyes. It seems at last to be discovered, that Negroes are men; that as men, they are subject to human passions; that they can feel when they are injured; that they can conceive, and meditate, and mature; can combine and concert, and at length proceed to execute with vigour what they have planned with policy. Such being the lesson which the Island of St. Domingo has taught to those most unwilling to receive it; the immense disproportion between the Blacks and Whites in our islands, perhaps ten or even fifteen to one, is a subject of most just and serious dread, and the danger is extremely aggravated, by the difference between the two descriptions being so plain and palpable, that the more numerous body is continually reminded of its own force. What but insanity would go on every year augmenting a disproportion already so great!

But it is highly important also to consider, that the continuance of the Slave Trade not only aggravates the danger of the West Indian settlements, by increasing the disproportion between Blacks and Whites, but still more by introducing that very description of persons which has been acknowledged by the most approved West Indian writers to be most prone to insurrections. Here let us refer again to the historian of Jamaica. “The truth is,” says he, “that ever since the introduction of Africans into the West Indies, insurrections have occurred in every one of the colonies, British as well as foreign, at times.”[49] Again, “The vulgar opinion in England confounds all the Blacks in one class, and supposes them equally prompt for rebellion; an opinion that is grossly erroneous. The Negroes who have been chief actors in the seditions and mutinies which at different times have broken out here, were the imported Africans.”[50] Again; “If insurrections should happen oftener in Jamaica than in the smaller islands, it would not be at all surprising; since it has generally contained more Negroes than all the windward British islands taken together: its importations in some years have been very great:

In 1764 imported, 10,223

And from January 1765 to July 1766, a year and a half, 16,760

“So large a multitude as 27,000 introduced in the space of two years and a half, furnishes a very sufficient reason, if there was no other, to account for plots and mutinies.”[51] Let it be remembered, that since Mr. Long’s book was published, in 1774, there have been retained probably above 200,000 Negroes; and add to these the importations which have subsequently taken place in our other islands, and remember, that, as even Negroes can confederate, and the Slaves in the several islands might mutually assist each other, all the islands are interested; that fresh accessions of Negroes should not be permitted in any one: then estimate if you can the sum of the danger which has been too long suffered to accumulate without restraint, and which is every year still increasing.

Even at the very moment in which I am writing, I hear rumours of an insurrection in one of our smaller colonies, Grenada; and though I cannot trace the report to any authentic source, yet it is impossible to deny that it is highly probable. The importations into this island have been of late years larger, considering its size, than into most of our other islands; thence the report derives additional probability. But to all the foregoing considerations, add that new aggravation of the dangers of our West Indian colonies, that, almost within the visible horizon of our largest island, the Negroes have been taught but too intelligibly the fatal secret of their own strength. Here also the Planters may learn, were it not before abundantly clear, how ardent is the Negroes’ love of liberty, and what a price they are willing to pay for it. The season is critical—not a moment is to be lost. The British Legislature should consider the present as a happy interval, in which, perhaps, an opportunity is yet providentially afforded them, of averting the gathering storm. If they pause, it will be too late.

Let it not be said, that the West Indians themselves can best judge of the reality of the danger, and that they do not greatly regard it. It might, indeed, have been expected, that the necessity of compulsion would here be superseded by every man’s concern for his own interest and safety. But that takes place in this case, which often happens where danger is apprehended to the whole community, from practices in which men engage for their own individual advantage. Each particular instance of this practice seems to add but little to the amount of the general danger, or but little in proportion to the advantage which the individual expects to derive from it. The danger besides is uncertain, however probable; and he shares it in common with the whole community. The benefit he conceives certain, and the gain is all his own. Is not this then precisely the state of circumstances in which the legislature should interfere as the general guardian of the whole community, and prevent the interest and happiness of all from being endangered by individual avarice, obstinacy, or foolhardiness. But it would not be wonderful if the resident West Indians themselves were not conscious on what hollow ground they stand. It is nothing new that they who are most exposed to a great danger are the least aware of it; that, like the short-sighted inhabitants of Puzzoli, or Terra del Gréco, they alone are insensible to the approaching lava which is about to desolate their dwellings. It happens in this, as in other instances, familiarity with the danger naturally generates insensibility to it, and the very persons who are most exposed to its evils, are most blind to its reality and magnitude. But the legislature, as a provident guardian of the whole community, should exercise its watchful superintendence, and take that step which is the natural preliminary to all radical reform, and to all effectual measures for the future safety of the islands. But, to state the truth, it is not merely by familiarity with the great danger which we have been describing, that the resident colonists are rendered insensible to it. This insensibility results in no small degree from the extreme degradation of the Negro race. The resident White is so accustomed to regard them as of an inferior species, that he is no more apprehensive lest they should learn the fatal secret of their own strength, and combine for their own deliverance, than lest such a combination should take place among the horses or cattle, or any other inferior animals, which may therefore, without danger, be suffered to increase their numbers to any amount.[52] Is it possible to see men thus lulled into a fatal insensibility to such a great and obvious danger, without recognizing once more that righteous ordination of the Almighty, by which, when human laws are inactive, he provides natural punishment of our infringement on the rights and happiness of our fellow creatures.

But the dangers to our great island of Jamaica, arising out of its proximity to St. Domingo, are not yet exhausted. Contemplate the state of St. Domingo. See how it is placed; almost in contact with Jamaica. Consider its size, and its vast Black population. And since recent events have so clearly proved that Negroes can reason, and feel and act like ourselves; we may form no unjust judgment of the probable sentiments and emotions of these free Negroes, by imagining what in similar circumstances would be our own.

Take then the Negroes of St. Domingo, justly jealous of the Europeans, and resolved carefully to watch over and defend those newly-acquired liberties which they have so dearly purchased. They hear of cargoes of their wretched countrymen continually torn from their native land, and doomed for life to a state of vassalage. They see that, all around them, their African countrymen are still detained in that same state of bitter bondage from which they have themselves so lately emerged. They know that the Colonists in all the islands regard them with mixed emotions of hatred and fear, and would rejoice in being able again to rivet on their chains. Do they not see, in the present degraded state of their brethren, and remember in their own, that there is a grand fundamental ground of distinction between Blacks and Whites, a radical separation and even opposition of interests; a real, enduring principle of hostility?

May they not reasonably be supposed to think that they owe it alike to their honour and their security to vindicate the rights of their sable countrymen? May they not apprehend, that if they do not, while they can, assist their brethren in the neighbouring colonies to assert their freedom, and drive out their taskmasters, the white inhabitants of the other islands will not only preserve their empire over the Blacks already subject to them, but be continually plotting for the destruction of freedom in St. Domingo? May they not justly fear lest the European Powers, when their present differences shall be made up, should hereafter combine their efforts to restore, even in St. Domingo itself, the yoke of slavery?

Such, it is not unnatural to suppose, will be the reasonings and sensations of the St. Domingo Negroes. But experience has in vain afforded us proofs of the watchfulness, address, and versatility of our indefatigable enemy, if we do not suppose it possible that Bonaparte, by his agents, will reinforce those natural surmises; that by suggesting, through his emissaries, to the Negroes of St. Domingo, the dangers to which they are exposed, and the means of averting them, he will endeavour to stimulate them to invade Jamaica, and to stir up in all our islands insurrection and revolt. Those whom he has in vain attempted to make the victims of his rapacity, he will thus render the instruments of his revenge.

Let any one read the “Crisis of our Sugar Colonies” with seriousness, and he will acknowledge the amount, the variety, the probability, of the dangers to which our West Indian settlements are exposed. Their reality as well as their magnitude must equally be confessed by every man whose judgment is not totally obscured by interest, or whose discernment is not altogether blinded by familiarity with the objects which he views.

[Sidenote: Our population drained.]

The next of the important topics to which I lately alluded is one on which, from prudential motives, I will press lightly; but which I must commend to the most serious attention of my readers, not merely from considerations of humanity, but even of self-interest. The West Indies have long been regarded as the grave of our soldiers and seamen, but never surely with so much reason as of late years. For a new disease has broken out, so terribly wasteful in its effects, and so little subject hitherto to the controul of medicine, as to furnish too just cause for fearing lest there should be such a constant drain of the population of the mother country, as from the numbers consumed on the one hand, perhaps even still more on the other, from the dangerous effects on our naval and military service (I trust I shall be understood, though, from motives of caution, I rather hint than express my meaning) to render the protection of our transatlantic colonies incompatible with our internal security. This is a topic on which I will not press; but in proportion as I abstain from the alarming discussion, lest I should in any degree aggravate one of the evils which I apprehend, let it be deeply and seriously weighed by every considerate mind. Even independently of interest, shall not the voice of humanity be heard? Is it nothing to send the brave defenders of our country, and the flower of our youth, to a pestilential climate, where they fall not in the field of battle, not contending with the enemies of their country, but where they perish unknown, and therefore ingloriously, often even falling the victims of their own fears, from beholding such multitudes around them continually swept away.[53]

But that which I must press upon you is, that all these sufferers, or at least an immense majority of them, are the victims of the Slave Trade. For it is this pernicious traffic, which by the double operation of continually increasing the disproportion between the Blacks and Whites on the one hand, and of obstructing on the other those salutary reforms which would change by degrees this depraved, degraded mass into a happy peasantry; makes you shrink back with terror from defending the islands by their own internal resources, though we cannot but acknowledge that they would hereby be rendered utterly invincible by any European force which the great nation, or any others of our enemies, might bring against them.[54] And here a fresh prospect of misery opens to our view: here come in a new set of sufferers from the Slave Trade, not the less to be attended to, because, as yet at least, they do not themselves trace the bitter stream from which their cup is filled, to its original source; the numerous train of widows and orphans and relatives, whose nearest connections have fallen the victims of the diseases of the western world. I am persuaded, that if the full effect of the Slave Trade in this relation were generally known, the general feelings of the nation, more powerfully, alas! excited for our own subjects than for the unhappy Africans, would have produced throughout the British Isles one universal cry of indignation against this arch enemy of the happiness of mankind. Here is another of those instances, several of which in the course of this investigation we have had occasion to remark, wherein, through the righteous retribution of Heaven, wickedness and cruelty are not allowed, even in this world, to go unpunished; by which the irreligious and unfeeling are taught to respect the happiness of others, if from no higher motive, yet from regard to the preservation of their own.

[Sidenote: Summary view of the miseries produced by the Slave Trade.]

And now surely you must be prepared to admit without hesitation, and in its full extent, the declaration made by Mr. Pitt in the House of Commons, that the Slave Trade was the greatest practical evil that ever had afflicted the human race. Such indeed it would be found, had we but leisure to take the real weight of all the various evils which it includes; and surely it might well become us to enter into this examination. But it would almost exceed the powers of calculation, after having traced the Slave Trade into all its various forms of suffering, to estimate the amount of them all.

Let us, however, spend a few moments in adding up the great totals of which it consists, that we may be the less likely to deceive ourselves, as in such cases men are apt to do, by underrating the evils of which we are the cause, and consequently the amount of guilt with which we are chargeable.

To begin with Africa. If we would form a fair calculation of the aggregate sum of misery caused by the Slave Trade, we must remember that it is by no means to be estimated by the numbers which we actually carry away into slavery: Nor yet by adding to them all the wretched relatives, families, and connections who are left behind: Nor yet by superadding the devastation and misery which, to those who may not actually be caught and carried off, may arise from all the several predatory expeditions occasioned by the Slave Trade, either directly or in retaliation of former aggressions originating from the same cause: Nor still by adding the destruction and desolation produced by national wars (for of these the Slave Trade is often the origin), with pestilence and famine, and all the various forms of misery which follow war in its train: Nor even yet by subjoining the wretchedness of those, with all their families and friends, who are the victims of injustice and treachery, masking themselves under the forms of law, or availing themselves of the native superstitions.

But let us endeavour to make the case our own, and to consider what it 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?