fhall be constrained to confefs that his tender mercies are cruel. In the year 1791 (three years after the paffing of the Slave-carrying A&,which is admitted by the Man-Merchants themselves to have very greatly leffened the mortality on board of flave-fhips), of 15,754 flaves carried from the coaft of Africa, 1,378 died during the middle paffage, the average length of which was fifty-one days; making a mortality of 8 per cent. in that time, or of 62 per cent. per annum: a rate of mortality which would unpeople the Earth in a year and feven months. The amount of the mortality in 1792 was, however, ftill more enormous. Of 31,554 flaves carried from Africa, no fewer than 5,413 died on the paffage, making fomewhat more than 17 per cent. in fifty-one days. Had the voyage been prolonged, and the flaves continued to die in the fame proportion, the whole number would have been completely fwept-away in about ten months*. I would now afk, whether it be fair, whether it be allowable, to dignify a practice fo pregnant with misery and murder, with the name of commerce? Surely this cannot long be endured by a British Parliament. If it is to be tolerated, let us at least have some fpecious pretext for the indulgence: let there be, at least, one practice pointed-out, either in ancient or modern ftory, which will bear to be compared for one moment with this abominable traffick: otherwise we ought no longer to be impofed-upon by the hardy affumption of its antiquity and universality. But the horrors of the middle paffage are at length terminated. The flaves are landed in the Weft-Indies; exposed like cattle in a Fair; spanned and gauged with as little ceremony as is obferved by a carcafe-butcher in Smithfield; and, haying been purchased by some planter, * See accounts laid on the table of the House of Lords, in 1799. are are led to his eftate. What is, then, the fituation of such of them as furvive the feasoning? They are the absolute property of their purchaser, vendible by him precisely in the fame manner as the horfe which turns his fugar-mill, and, if direct privation of life and limb be excepted, equally fubject to his discretion as to the quantity of labour to be exacted, the proportion of food to be allowed, and the dif cipline or punishment to be inflicted. During the hours of labour, they are driven, like a team of oxen or horses, by the cart-whip; and this compulsion of labour, by the phyfical impulse, or present terror of the whip, is univerfal with respect to fuch flaves as are engaged in cultivating our islands. As to civil rights, or any political existence, they ftand on a level with the brute. Immoderate cruelty to a flave is punishable as a nuisance, in the fame way as immoderate cruelty to cattle; but then, it is. always difficult, and generally impoffible, to obtain proof of the fact; for (let it not be forgotten) the evidence of a flave, or of a thousand flaves, did they all testify the fame thing, would not be available in the smallest degree to the conviction of one who is free. This, then, is the state of bondage to which not only the imported Africans themfelves, but their children, and their children's children, for ever and for ever, are inevitably configned and I defy any one to fhew, not only that a fingle circumstance in this picture is exaggerated, but that it is not a matter of as univerfal notoriety in the Weft Indies, whatever it may be in Europe, as the existence of flavery at all. I do not mean, indeed, to affirm, that this fyftem is not as humanely adminiftered by fome Wei-Indian planters, as its nature will admit. But ftill fuch is the fyftem which they have to adminifter. Let it be remarked, however, that there is one circumftance in the lot of Weft-Indian Slaves which renders it pre even worse than that of brutes; they not only feel the fent pain, but they can remember the past, they can - anticipate the future, they can difcourfe, they can contrive, they can execute, they can diftinguish between right and wrong; they have had the infolence, at times, to exercife this faculty; nay, they have even dared to prefer a claim to the poffeffion of humanity, by expreffing a fenfe of injury and injustice, and by fhewing that they can resent it. Hence it is, that, while in this country, we see men take pleasure in raifing their horfes and dogs to a participation of their own enjoyments, and to a place, as it were, in their friendship and fociety; the flave in the Weft-Indies is degraded and thruft-down to the very earth, left, looking upwards, fome untoward accident fhould difcover to him that he is a man, poffeffed of the fame common nature with his mafter, and equally entitled with him to feel, and to repel infult, and injury, and torture. Now, I do not hesitate to challenge all the advocates of the Slave-Trade to point-out, in ancient times, any ftate or condition of life, which bears the most remote refemblance to the Weft-Indian fyftem; viewed in all its parts, from its commencement in Africa, to its completion in the Weft-Indies. Nay, fo far is it from having any claim to antiquity, that I take it upon myself to aver that this fyftem, as now conftituted, is entirely a modern invention. It took its rife in the Antilles, about 220 years ago; and from that time it has been gradually augmenting, until by the accumulating wafte of the British capital and African blood, it has acquired its prefent hideous form and gigantick dimenfions. Still, however, it may be pertinaciously argued that flavery is flavery, and that no doubt can be entertained of the existence of fuch a ftate of fociety among the Ifraelites. The bondage, however, which prevailed among the Ifrael ites will not be faid, by the moft hardy vindicator of the modern Man-Merchant, to have been worse than that to which the children of Ifrael themselves had been fubjected in Egypt. Of that ftate they always fpoke as a state of the most intolerable oppreffion. In comparison of it, every other fervitude was light. Their deliverance from it, as typical of another and greater deliverance, was called, by way of eminence, their redemption. So powerful was their impreffion of the horrors of this state, that the iron furnace, the furnace of affliction, and fimilar expreffions, seem inadequate to exprefs their conceptions of it; and Egypt, the land of their captivity, is emphatically termed the bouse of bondage and it is by the recollection of their fuffering in that country, that the Almighty enforced upon them the injunction to be kind to the strangers that dwelt among them. Yet what, after all, was the nature of this Egyptian bondage? Was its dreadful severity fuch as to diminish the number of flaves, and to require fresh importatious to fillup the void which was caufed by exceffive labour, harsh treatment, and scanty food? By no means. They multiplied fo rapidly as to become an object of terror to their oppreffors from their very increase. Had their labours no known measure or limit, or, was it forced from them at the caprice of an overfeer or driver, by the compelling power of the cart-whip? No fuch thing. It was the fubject of specifick and uniform regulation: tasks were appointed the tale of bricks was previously named. And, as to food, the flesh-pots of Egypt had become proverbial among them. : Having now, as I conceive, incontrovertibly established the radical difference between any flavery which could have existed among the Ifraelites, and that which now exifts in the Weft-Indies, I have at least demolished every thing U 2 thing like argument in favour of the Scriptural fanɛtion of the African Slave-Trade. I would, therefore, entreat those well-meaning men in this country, who, from unacquaintance with the real ftate of things in the Weft-Indies, have too readily conceded that the fyftem of Weft-Indian bondage has any countenance in Scripture, to retract that conceffion; and to be no longer impofed-upon by the mere fimil.. arity of a name, when the things are in their nature for effentially distinct. And let not the Man-Merchants, nor their advocates, any longer infult the common fenfe, to fay nothing of the religion, of their country, by arguments fo abfurd and impious. It will scarcely be expected that, after this confutation of the argument deduced from Scripture in favour of the Slavetrade, I fhould think it neceffary to prove the contrariety of those practices to which this trade gives birth, as well as of the principles on which it is founded, to the whole tenor and scope both of the Old and of the New Testament. That the fpirit of the Chriftian religion ftands opposed to the flave-trade is too obvious to require proof; I fhall, therefore, content myself with having rectified the misconceptions which have arifen on this fubject from the ambiguous use of the term flavery, and with quoting two or three paffages of Scripture, which feem to have a pretty decifive bearing on the question. "Therefore all things whatfoever ye would that men fhould do to you, do ye even fo to them; for this is the law and the prophets." "The law is made for the lawlefs and difobedient; for men-stealers." "And he that stealeth a man, and felleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he fall furely be put to death." Your's, &c. AN ABOLITIONIST. |