Part 3

The difference between the circumstances of the inland districts and those adjacent to the coast, will of course create some corresponding difference in the effects produced on them by the Slave Trade. In the interior of the country, the kingdoms, though even they are often split into a number of independent states, are generally of greater extent than on the coast, which is often, especially on the Windward and Gold coast, separated into numberless petty communities, under their respective Chieftains or Aristocracies. It should likewise be remarked, that on one extensive part of the coast of Africa which is divided into a number of different states, every black or white factor who has acquired a little property, forms a settlement or village, and becomes a petty chieftain, and carries on against his neighbours a predatory warfare, by which they are of course excited to reciprocal acts of hostility. In the interior, acts of depredation on members of another community, though, as we are told, very common, are not near so frequent as on the coast; except, perhaps, on the boundaries of kingdoms: and it is remarkable, that Mr. Parke informs us, that the boundaries even of the most populous and powerful kingdoms are commonly very ill peopled. On members of the same community also, these depredations, though undoubtedly frequent, are for many reasons much less common than in the countries bordering on the shore. The concealment of any such act of rapine would be obviously much more difficult; neither might it be easy for private traders to secrete their victims, during the long interval which might elapse, before an opportunity might offer of disposing of them. Again, the chieftains or kings of these large communities, while on the one hand, their more abundant revenues place them above the necessity of resorting to such ruinous means of supplying their wants, as the pillage of their own villages, so on the other, not coming into immediate contact with the Slave Traders, they are not so liable to be suddenly instigated, in the madness of intoxication, to the commission of such outrages. The same difference in the circumstances of the interior, prevents the administration of justice, or the native superstitions, being resorted to in the same degree as on the coast. And it is remarkable, that though Mr. Parke speaks of crimes as one source of supply to the Slave Trade, we do not find in his narrative, one single instance specified of a Slave having been so furnished. [Sidenote: Evils of Slave Trade aggravated on the Coast.] But, above all, let it be remembered, on the coast the grand repository of temptations is palpable, and on the spot; of temptations commonly of that precise kind, which, by the gratifications they hold out to the depraved appetites, and bad passions of man, spirituous liquors, gunpowder, and fire-arms, the incentives to acts of violence, and the means of committing them, are apt to operate most powerfully on uncivilized men. The love of spirituous liquors, is a passion also, which becomes from indulgence, more craving, and difficult to be resisted. The Captains of Slave ships, who are sound practical philosophers, thoroughly conversant, at least, with all the bad parts of human nature, are well aware of these propensities, and of the advantages which may be derived from them; and hence, they often begin by giving to the petty king or chieftain a present of brandy or rum, anticipating the large returns for this liberality, which future acts of depredation will supply. It is almost a happy circumstance when the chieftain, by possessing the implements of war, is tempted to revenge some old injury, or to ravage and carry off the inhabitants of some neighbouring district, instead of preying on his own miserable subjects. Meanwhile the Slave factor himself takes no part in the quarrels between contending chieftains, but which party soever is victorious, he finds his advantage in the war. He supplies all the contending parties with fire-arms and ammunition, and receives all the Slaves which are made on both sides with perfect impartiality. Under such circumstances, might we not anticipate, what we know from positive evidence, that the factor stirs up and inflames dissensions, from which, whoever else may be the loser, he is sure to gain. It has been even imputed to neighbouring chiefs, who, assisted by their respective allies, have carried on with each other a long protracted war, that by a mutual understanding, they have abstained from wasting each other’s territories, while each carried on his ravages against the allies of his enemy with great activity and success. But it is not to kings or chieftains only, that the Slave Trade holds out strong temptations. The appetite for spirituous liquors is universal. European commodities are coveted by all. Whether for attack or defence, fire-arms and gunpowder are most desirable. In such a loose state of society, almost every one has some malice to wreak, some injury to retaliate. Thus sensuality, avarice, hostility, revenge, every bad passion is called into action; while there lies the Slave ship, ready to receive old and young, males and females, all in short who are brought to it, and, without question or exception, to furnish the desired gratification in return. The Captains of Slave ships themselves, who gave evidence before the House of Commons, frankly and invariably acknowledged, that it is the universal practice, if the price can be agreed on, to purchase all who are brought to them, without examination as to the manner in which the Slave has been obtained, as to his former condition, or the vendor’s right to sell. So well did they seem to be aware how much the success of their traffic might depend on this mode of conducting it, that they even resented it as an insult on their understandings, when they were asked whether any questions of this kind were put by the purchaser. Thus, whenever a Slave ship is on the coast, a large and general premium is immediately held out for the perpetration of acts of fraud, violence, and rapine. Every child, every unprotected female that can be seized on, can be immediately turned to account. No wonder that, as Captain Wilson informs us, the inhabitants are afraid of venturing out of their own doors without being armed; a practice of which one of themselves gave him the explanation, by significantly pointing to a Slave ship which then lay in sight, completing her cargo.

But it is not only without doors that the Slave ship holds out its lure; it is not only by open violence that it operates. When the Slave ships arrive, unjust convictions are multiplied. Accusations for witchcraft become frequent. And it is well worthy of remark, that these native superstitions, being thus maintained in continued life and action, have continued in full force in those very districts, where the intercourse of the natives with the Europeans has been the longest, and the most intimate; while in the interior, the same barbarous practices have either gone into decay of themselves, or seem to have faded away before the feeble light of Mahometanism. Even among private families the seeds of insecurity and cruelty are copiously sown; and from the pressure of present temptation, a husband or a master is often induced, in a fit of temporary anger or jealousy, to sell his wife or his domestics, whom afterwards he often in vain wishes he could recover.

[Sidenote: Practice of receiving relations as pawns, and consequences of it.]

But besides these general and powerfully operating causes of evil, which have been already noticed, there is one circumstance in the manner of conducting the trade on the coast, which so naturally tends to the production of frequent acts of violence, as to deserve a distinct specification. It affords another striking instance of the way in which the Slave Trade has in a long course of years gradually imparted a taint to all the institutions and customs of Africa. It is the general custom for Captains of Slave ships, in exchange for the goods which they advance on credit, and of which the value, as has been stated, is to be repaid to them in Slaves, to receive the children or some other near relations of the Black Factor as pledges, or as they are termed in Africa _pawns_, whom the Slave captains are to return when the stipulated number of Slaves has been delivered. With the goods which have been entrusted to him he commonly goes up the country; and, knowing that by some means or other the requisite number of Slaves must be furnished, or that his own nearest relatives, and he himself too if he can be taken, will be carried off into slavery, it is obvious, that when the day for the sailing of the ship draws nigh, he will not be very scrupulous in the means to which he resorts for completing his assortment. Thus even parental instinct and the domestic and social affections are rendered by the Slave Trade the incentives to acts of cruelty and rapine. But it would be endless were I to attempt to lay before you in detail all the various forms and modes of wickedness, and misery, of which, directly and indirectly, the Slave Trade is productive. It’s general and leading features have been now exhibited to you.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation of effects of Slave Trade.]

Such are the methods by which from eighty to one hundred thousand of our fellow creatures, a race of people too, declared by Mr. Parke himself, to be perhaps beyond all others, passionately attached to their native soil, are annually torn from their country, their homes, their friends, and from whatever is most dear to them. All the ties of nature, and habit, and feeling, are burst asunder; and, by a long voyage, the horrors of which were acknowledged to constitute of themselves an almost incalculable sum of misery, these victims of our injustice are carried to a distant land, to wear away the whole remainder of their lives in a state of hopeless slavery and degradation, with the same melancholy prospect for their descendants after them, for ever.

Yet even this is not all. There is one consequence of the Slave Trade, a consequence too, most important to Africa, which still remains to be pointed out. It were much to foment and aggravate, not seldom to produce, long and bloody wars—to incite to incessant acts of the most merciless depredation—to poison and embitter the administration of the laws—and in general, to give a malignant taint to religious and civil institutions; thus, turning into engines of oppression and misery, that very machinery of the social state, which is naturally conducive to the protection and comfort of mankind. It is much to compel men to live at home amid the alarm, elsewhere only felt, and with the precautions only used in an enemy’s country,—to hold out a direct premium to rapine and murder,—in short, to produce the general prevalence of selfishness, and fraud, and violence, and cruelty, and terror, and revenge. And all this; not on a small scale, or within narrow limits, but throughout an immense region, bounded by a line of coast of between three and four thousand miles, and stretching inland to various depths, not seldom to a distance which it requires several months to travel. But there is one triumph still behind; one effect of the Slave Trade; which, if it excite not at first the same lively sympathy, as some others of it’s more direct outrages, on the comforts of domestic or the peace of social life, will yet, in the deliberate judgment of a considerate mind, appear on reflection to be of more importance than all the rest. [Sidenote: Another most important consequence of the Slave Trade.] This is, that by keeping in a state of incessant insecurity, of person and property, the whole of the district which is visited by Europeans, we maintain an impassable barrier on that side, through which [Sidenote: It prevents the civilization of Africa.] alone any rays of the religious and moral light and social improvements of our happier quarter of the globe might penetrate into the interior, and thus lock up the whole of that vast continent in it’s present state of wretchedness and darkness.

[Sidenote: No natural death of the Slave Trade.]

Here, then, we see the bitter cup of Africa filled to the very brim. For the above consideration shews but too clearly, that she cannot expect any natural termination of her sufferings from the gradual progress of civilization and knowledge, which have, in some other instances, put a period to a less extended traffic for Slaves in countries differently situated. The very channels through which alone, according to all human calculation, Africa might have hoped to receive the blessings of religious and moral light, and social improvement, are precisely those through which her miseries flow in upon her with so full a tide. Thus the African Slave Trade provides for it’s own indefinite continuance. Here also, as in other instances which have been already pointed out, it turns into poison what has been elsewhere most salutary, and renders that very intercourse, which has been ordinarily the grand means of civilization, the most sure and operative instrument, in the perpetuation of barbarism.

[Sidenote: Our aggravated guilt.]

At length, then, we are prepared to form some judgment of the effects of European intercourse on the state and happiness of Africa. The darkness of Paganism were a very insufficient palliation of such a tissue of cruelty and crimes. But surely it is no small aggravation of our guilt, that We, who are the prime agents in this traffic of wickedness and blood, are ourselves the most free, enlightened, and happy people that ever existed upon earth. We profess a religion which inculcates truth and love, peace and good-will, among men—We are foremost in a commerce which exists but by war, treachery, and devastation. We enjoy a political constitution of government, eminent above all others for securing to the very meanest and weakest the blessings of civil liberty, of personal security, and equal laws—yet We take the lead in maintaining this accursed system, which begins in fraud and violence, and is consummated in bondage and degradation. Blessed ourselves with religious light and knowledge, we prolong in Africa the reign of ignorance and superstition. In short, instead of endeavouring to diffuse among nations, less favoured than ourselves, the blessings we enjoy; after our crime has been indisputably proved to us, in defiance alike of conscience and of reputation, we industriously and perseveringly continue to deprave and darken the Creation of God.

There is scarcely any point of view in which the nature and effects of our intercourse with Africa will appear so peculiarly disgraceful to us as a christian nation, as when we contemplate them in connection with the benefits which the Africans derive from their intercourse with the Mahometans. When we cast our eyes towards the south-west of Europe, and behold extensive countries, once possessed by the most polished nations, the chosen seats of literature and the liberal arts; and now behold one universal waste of ignorance and barbarism, we have always been accustomed to ascribe the fatal change to the conquest of a band of Mahometan invaders, and to regret that such fine countries should remain under the benumbing effects of a Mussulman government. On the other hand, in contemplating the superior state of our northern parts of Europe, we have been used, with reason, to ascribe much of our light and liberty, and many of our various blessings, to the influence of that pure religion which is the friend of freedom, of peace, and good-will among men. But with what shame must we acknowledge, that in Africa, Christianity and Mahometanism appear to have mutually interchanged characters.—Smith, the African Company’s own agent in 1722, tells us, “the discerning natives account it their greatest unhappiness that they were ever visited by the Europeans. They say that we Christians introduced the traffic of Slaves, and that before our coming they lived in peace. But, say they, it is observable, that wherever Christianity comes, there come with it, a sword, a gun, powder and ball.”[8]

The same picture may appear to claim still greater attention from the hand of Mr. Parke, whose visit is more recent, and whose knowledge of Africa is more extensive.—Speaking of the Foulah nation, who are many of them professed Mahometans, he says, “religious persecution is not known among them, nor is it necessary, for the system of Mahomet is made to extend itself by means abundantly more efficacious. By establishing small schools in the different towns, where many of the Pagan as well as Mahometan children are taught to read the Koran, and instructed in the tenets of the prophet, the Mahometan priests fix a bias on the minds, and form the character of their young disciples, which no accidents of life can ever afterwards remove or alter. Many of these little schools I visited in my progress through the country, and observed with pleasure the great docility, and submissive deportment of the children, and heartily wished they had had better instructors, and a purer religion.” Again, speaking of the Mandingo country, and of other parts of Africa, and of the eagerness which the natives, both Pagan and Mahometan, shew to acquire some knowledge of letters, Mr. Parke speaks out still more intelligibly, and appears feelingly alive to the humiliation of his own religion; and, from motives of christian zeal as well as of humanity, he recommends our endeavouring to introduce the light of true religion into that benighted land.[9] “Although,” says he, “the negroes in general have a very great idea of the wealth and power of the Europeans, I am afraid that the Mahometan converts among them think but very lightly of our superior attainments in religious knowledge. The white traders in the maritime districts take no pains to counteract this unhappy prejudice.”—“To me, therefore, it was not so much the subject of wonder, as matter of regret, to observe, that while the superstition of Mahomet has in this manner scattered a few faint beams of learning among these poor people, the precious light of Christianity is altogether excluded. I could not but lament, that although the coast of Africa has now been known and frequented by the Europeans for more than two hundred years, yet the negroes still remain entire strangers to the doctrines of our holy religion.”— “The poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as barbarians, look upon us, I fear, as little better than a race of formidable but ignorant Heathens.”

Such was Smith’s relation, near a century ago, of the judgment formed by the Africans, of the effects of their intercourse with the Christian nations. Such is the acknowledgment of Mr. Parke, who is certainly disposed to paint the effects of the Slave Trade in the softest colours. Is it possible for any one who calls himself a Christian, and a member of the British Empire, to read the passage without the deepest humiliation and sorrow, and without longing also, not only to stop the guilty commerce we have so long carried on, but to endeavour to repair, in some degree, the wrongs of Africa, and with active but tardy kindness, to impart to her some small share of the overflowings of our superabundant blessings?

“But surely,” you will long ere now have been ready to exclaim, “Surely the facts which you have laid before us, though believed by the abolitionists, could not have been established in the judgment of the majority of the House of Commons;”—and you may justly require some decisive evidence in proof of them.

[Sidenote: Evidence by which the above statements are established.]

To adduce all the specific testimony by which the above allegations were established, would be to fill a volume. I mean, as a specimen of the whole, to extract, and subjoin in an appendix, a few passages from the vast body of evidence with which we are furnished on this subject. But it would be injustice to the great cause I am pleading, not to declare, that the above statements were established beyond all possible dispute; and also, that, with occasional variations, resulting from the difference in the forms of government, and in other circumstances, they were found to be applicable not to particular parts only of Africa, but to the whole of that vast district which is visited by the European Slave ships; to be, not the exception, but the rule; not the occasional, but the general and systematic effects of the Slave Trade ships. We have the evidence of several most respectable Officers of the navy, to prove, that wherever they touched, acts of depredation were common. The same practices were found to prevail in the widely distant countries of Senegambia and the Gold coast, by men of Science, one of whom produced a journal, kept at the time, in which he daily entered all that appeared to him worthy of remark; and it was from this record that the Committee read the affecting account which has been mentioned, in which one of the African Kings, with every appearance of sincerity, repeatedly expressed his deep remorse for having been instigated, in a season of intoxication, into which he had been drawn by the Slave merchants, to oppress and pillage his subjects. Much of the Abolitionists’ information was also obtained from those who, in different capacities, chiefly as surgeons, more commonly as mates, and in some few instances as common sailors, had been actually employed in Slave ships; some of these persons had likewise been for many months on shore among the natives; and several of them had witnessed the practice of attacking villages by armed parties in the night, and carrying away, and selling all they could seize.

[Sidenote: Opponents’ contrary evidence.]

In opposition to all this testimony, the Slave Traders produced several witnesses, who were either still engaged in the Slave Trade, or who had formerly carried it on, some of whom had resided several years in Slave factories on the coast. By them it was generally declared, that acts of depredation for the purpose of procuring Slaves were never committed; they had never even heard of such practices, nor had they ever heard of the practice, or of the term, of panyaring or kidnapping.[10] Crimes and witchcraft were said to be the chief sources of supply; a few were furnished by insolvency. The trials were said to be fair, the convictions just. In short, according to their report, the Africans, of whose natural dispositions and character they at the same time gave a highly unfavourable representation, and whose government was said to be very loose and imperfect, must have been a people of the most extraordinary moral excellency, who had for centuries resisted present and strong temptations, which in every other country had proved too powerful to be successfully opposed. Such, according to these witnesses, was the state of things on the coast. Of the interior, from whence the greater part of the Slaves were brought, they professed to know little or nothing.

[Sidenote: Opponents’ evidence decisively refuted.]