Part 19

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._

The Sieur Brüe having received an assortment of goods by a fleet from France, sent notice to the Damel, or king of Kayor, between the rivers Senegal and Gambia, as he had promised, and wrote him word, that if he had a sufficient number of slaves, he was ready to trade with him.—This prince, as well as the other negro monarchs, have always a sure way of supplying this deficiency, by selling their own subjects; for which they seldom want pretensions, of some kind or other, to justify their rapine. The Damel had recourse to this method: knowing the Sieur Brüe would give him no credit, as he was already in the Company’s debt, he seized three hundred of his own people, and sent word to the Sieur Brüe, that he had slaves to deliver for his goods, if he would come to Rufisco, where he waited to receive him.—(p. 29, 30.).

The Damel wishing for more goods than his slaves would purchase, the Sieur Brüe proposed having a licence to take so many of his people; he refused to consent, saying, it might occasion a disturbance amongst his subjects; and so he was forced to want the goods he desired for that time.

The chief sometimes penetrated far into the country, always returning well loaded with slaves and spoil.—(42.).

This is the negro manner of making war—it is a great chance if they come to a pitched battle. Their campaigns are usually mutual incursions, to plunder and carry off slaves, which they sell to the traders on the coast.—(p. 42.)

The isle of Bassao is very populous, and would be much more so, if it were not for the frequent incursions made by the Biafaras, Balantes, and Bissagos negroes, who often infest the coasts.

The Europeans are far from desiring to act as peace-makers among them, which would be contrary to their interest; since the greater the wars are, the more slaves. These wars of theirs are never long; generally speaking, they are incursions, or expeditions, of five or six days.—(p. 98.)

He then describes the mode of their warfare: When the emperor of Bassao judges proper to invade his enemies, he sounds his bonbalon, and immediately the officers of his troops repair with their soldiers, armed, to the place directed; there they find the king’s canoe of war, of which he has a fleet of twenty-nine or thirty. They put twenty men in each canoe:—they embark them, full of hope, and order matters so as to reach the enemy’s country by night. They land without noise; and if they find any lone cottage without defence, they surround it; and after forcing it, carry off all the inhabitants and effects to their boats, and immediately reimbark.

If the villages be strong, they are not fond of attacking them, but rather plant themselves in ambuscade on the ways to some river or spring, and endeavour to surprise and carry off the natives. On the least advantages of this kind gained, they return in as great a triumph as if they had obtained a complete victory. The king has, for his duties and the use of his fleet, the half of the booty. The rest is divided among the captors. All these slaves in general are sold to the Europeans, unless they be persons of some rank, whose friends can redeem them, paying two slaves, or, five or six oxen.—(p. 98).

Of the Bissagoes he says: They are passionate lovers of brandy. Whenever a ship brings any, they strive who shall be the first, and stick at nothing to get it. The weaker becomes a prey to the stronger. They forget the laws of nature; the father sells his children; and, if they can seize their parents, they serve them in the same manner. Every thing goes for brandy.”—(p. 104.)

_Barbot’s Travels, about 1700.—Astley, vol. ii._

Barbot, speaking of the blacks, says, rather than work they will rob and murder on the highway, or carry off those of a neighbouring village, and sell them for slaves.—(p. 255.)

They go farther yet; for some sell their own children, kindred, or neighbours. This, Barbot tells us, has often happened. To compass it, they desire the person they intend to sell, to help them in carrying something to the factory, by the way of trade; and when there the person so deluded, not understanding the language, is sold and delivered up as a slave, notwithstanding all his resistance and exclaiming against the treachery.