CHAPTER II.

As it is desirable to know the true sources of events in history, so this will be realized in that of the abolition of the Slave Trade.—Inquiry as to those who favoured the cause of the Africans previously to the year 1787.—All these to be considered as necessary forerunners in that cause.—First forerunners were Cardinal Ximenes; the Emperor Charles the Fifth; Pope Leo the Tenth; Elizabeth, queen of England; Louis the Thirteenth, of France.

It would be considered by many, who have stood at the mouth of a river, and witnessed its torrent there, to be both an interesting and a pleasing journey to go to the fountain head, and then to travel on its banks downwards, and to mark the different streams in each side, which should run into it and feed it. So I presume the reader will not be a little interested and entertained, in viewing with me the course of the abolition of the Slave Trade, in first finding its source, and then in tracing the different springs which have contributed to its increase. And here I may observe that, in doing this, we shall have advantages, which historians have not always had in developing the causes of things. Many have handed down to us, events, for the production of which they have given us but their own conjectures. There has been often, indeed, such a distance between the events themselves, and the lives of those who have recorded them, that the different means and motives belonging to them have been lost through time. On the present occasion, however, we shall have the peculiar satisfaction of knowing, that we communicate the truth, or that those which we unfold, are the true causes and means; for the most remote of all the human springs, which can be traced as having any bearing upon the great event in question, will fall within the period of three centuries, and the most powerful of them within the last twenty years. These circumstances indeed have had their share in inducing me to engage in the present history. Had I measured it by the importance of the subject, I had been deterred; but believing that most readers love the truth, and that it ought to be the object of all writers to promote it, and believing, moreover, that I was in possession of more facts on this subject than any other person, I thought I was peculiarly called to undertake it.

In tracing the different streams from whence the torrent arose, which has now happily swept away the Slave Trade, I must begin with an inquiry as to those who favoured the cause of the injured Africans, from the year 1516, to the year 1787, at which latter period, a number of persons associated themselves, in England, for its abolition. For though they, who belonged to this association, may, in consequence of having pursued a regular system, be called the principal actors, yet it must be acknowledged, that their efforts would never have been so effectual, if the minds of men had not been prepared by others, who had moved before them. Great events have never taken place without previously disposing causes. So it is in the case before us. Hence they, who lived even in early times, and favoured this great cause, may be said to have been necessary precursors in it. And here it may be proper to observe, that it is by no means necessary that all these should have been themselves actors in the production of this great event. Persons have contributed towards it in different ways:—Some have written expressly on the subject, who have had no opportunity of promoting it by personal exertions. Others have only mentioned it incidentally in their writings. Others, in an elevated rank and station, have cried out publicly concerning it, whose sayings have been recorded. All these, however, may be considered as necessary forerunners in their day; for all of them have brought the subject more or less into notice. They have more or less enlightened the mind upon it; they have more or less impressed it; and therefore each may be said to have had his share in diffusing and keeping up a certain portion of knowledge and feeling concerning it, which has been eminently useful in the promotion of the cause.

It is rather remarkable, that the first forerunners and coadjutors should have been men in power.

So early as in the year 1503, a few slaves had been sent from the Portuguese settlements in Africa into the Spanish colonies in America. In 1511, Ferdinand the Fifth, king of Spain, permitted them to be carried in great numbers. Ferdinand, however, must have been ignorant in these early times of the piratical manner in which the Portuguese had procured them. He could have known nothing of their treatment when in bondage, nor could he have viewed the few uncertain adventurous transportations of them into his dominions in the western world, in the light of a regular trade. After his death, however; a proposal was made by Bartholomew de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, to Cardinal Ximenes, who held the reigns of the government of Spain till Charles the Fifth came to the throne, for the establishment of a regular system of commerce in the persons of the native Africans. The object of Bartholomew de las Casas was undoubtedly to save the American Indians, whose cruel treatment and almost extirpation he had witnessed during his residence among them, and in whose behalf he had undertaken a voyage to the court of Spain. It is difficult to reconcile this proposal with the humane and charitable spirit of the bishop of Chiapa. But it is probable he believed that a code of laws would soon be established in favour both of Africans and of the natives in the Spanish settlements, and that he flattered himself that, being about to return and to live in the country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it. The cardinal, however, with a foresight, a benevolence, and a justice which will always do honour to his memory, refused the proposal, not only judging it to be unlawful to consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be very inconsistent to deliver the inhabitants of one country from a state of misery by consigning to it those of another. Ximenes, therefore, may be considered as one of the first great friends of the Africans after the partial beginning of the trade.

This answer of the cardinal, as it showed his virtue as an individual, so was it peculiarly honourable to him as a public man, and ought to operate as a lesson to other statesmen, how they admit any thing new among political regulations and establishments, which is connected in the smallest degree with injustice; for evil, when once sanctioned by governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and may, unless seasonably checked, become so ramified as to effect the reputation of a country, and to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the political concerns of the state. In no instance has this been verified more than in the case of the Slave Trade. Never was our national character more tarnished, and our prosperity more clouded by guilt. Never was there a monster more difficult to subdue. Even they, who heard as it were the shrieks of oppression, and wished to assist the sufferers, were fearful of joining in their behalf. While they acknowledged the necessity of removing one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and were, therefore, only able to relieve their feelings by, lamenting, in the bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.

After the death of Cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who had come into power, encouraged the Slave Trade. In 1517, he granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long enough to repent of what he had thus inconsiderately done; for in the year 1542, he made a code of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign dominions, and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order that all slaves in his American islands should he made free. This order was executed by Pedro de la Gasca. Manumission took place as well in Hispaniola as on the Continent; but on the return of Gasca to Spain, and the retirement of Charles into a monastery, slavery was revived.

It is impossible to pass over this instance of the abolition of slavery by Charles, in all his foreign dominions, without some comments. It shows him, first, to have been a friend both to the Indians and the Africans, as a part of the human race; it shows he was ignorant of what he was doing when he gave his sanction to this cruel trade; it shows when legislators give one set of men undue power over another, how quickly they abuse it, or he never would have found himself obliged, in the short space of twenty-five years, to undo that which he had countenanced as a great state measure; and while it confirms the former lesson to statesmen of watching the beginnings or principles of things in their political movements, it should teach them never to persist in the support of evils, through the false shame of being obliged to confess that they had once given them their sanction, nor to delay the cure of them because, politically speaking, neither this nor that is the proper season; but to do them away instantly, as there can only be one fit or proper time in the eye of religion, namely, on the conviction of their existence.

From the opinions of Cardinal Ximenes and of the emperor Charles the Fifth, I hasten to that which was expressed much about the same time, in a public capacity, by Pope Leo the Tenth. The Dominicans in Spanish America, witnessing the cruel treatment which the slaves underwent there, considered slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the gospel, and recommended the abolition of it. The Franciscans did not favour the former in this their scheme of benevolence; and the consequence was, that a controversy on this subject sprung up between them, which was carried to this pope for his decision. Leo exerted himself, much to his honour, in behalf of the poor sufferers, and declared "That not only the Christian religion, but that Nature herself cried out against a state of slavery." This answer was certainly worthy of one who was deemed the head of the Christian Church. It must, however, be confessed that it would have been strange if Leo, in his situation as pontiff, had made a different reply. He could never have denied that God was no respecter of persons. He must have acknowledged that men were bound to love each other as brethren; and, if he admitted the doctrine that all men were accountable for their actions hereafter, he could never have prevented the deduction that it was necessary they should be free. Nor could he, as a man of high attainments, living early in the sixteenth century, have been ignorant of what had taken place in the twelfth; or that, by the latter end of this latter century, christianity had obtained the undisputed honour of having extirpated slavery from the western part of the European world.

From Spain and Italy I come to England. The first importation of slaves from Africa, by our countrymen, was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562. This great princess seems on the very commencement of the trade to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a religious scruple concerning it; and, indeed, to have revolted at the very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most unjustifiable means might be made use of to procure the persons of the natives of Africa. And in what light she would have viewed any acts of this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact,—that when Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins returned from his first voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent for him, and, as we learn from Hill's Naval History expressed her concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that "it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers." Captain Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect, but he did not keep his word; for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the inhabitants and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words:—"Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will some time be the destruction of all who allow or encourage it." That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described to have uttered, can be only attributed to the pains taken by those concerned in it to keep her ignorant of the truth.

From England I now pass over to France. Labat, a Roman missionary, in his account of the isles of America, mentions that Louis the Thirteenth was very uneasy when he was about to issue the edict by which all Africans coming into his colonies were to be made slaves, and that this uneasiness continued till he was assured that the introduction of them in this capacity into his foreign dominions was the readiest way of converting them to the principles of the Christian religion.

These, then, were the first forerunners in the great cause of the abolition of the Slave Trade: nor have their services towards it been of small moment; for, in the first place, they have enabled those who came after them, and who took an active interest in the same cause, to state the great authority of their opinions and of their example. They have enabled them, again, to detail the history connected with these, in consequence of which circumstances have been laid open which it is of great importance to know; for have they not enabled them to state that the African Slave Trade never would have been permitted to exist but for the ignorance of those in authority concerning it—that at its commencement there was a revolting of nature against it—a suspicion, a caution, a fear, both as to its unlawfulness and its effects? Have they not enabled them to state that falsehoods were advanced, and these concealed under the mask of religion, to deceive those who had the power to suppress it? Have they not enabled them to state that this trade began in piracy, and that it was continued upon the principles of force? And, finally, have not they who have been enabled to make these statements, knowing all the circumstances connected with them, found their own zeal increased, and their own courage and perseverance strengthened; and have they not, by the communication of them to others, produced many friends and even labourers in the cause?



CHAPTER III.

Forerunners continued to 1787; divided from this time into four classes.—First class consists principally of persons in Great Britain of various descriptions: Godwyn; Baxter; Tryon; Southern; Primatt; Montesquieu; Hutcheson; Sharp; Ramsay; and a multitude of others, whose names and services follow.

I have hitherto traced the history of the forerunners in this great cause only up to about the year 1640. If I am to pursue my plan, I am to trace it to the year 1787. But in order to show what I intend in a clearer point of view, I shall divide those who have lived within this period, and who will now consist of persons in a less elevated station, into four classes: and I shall give to each class a distinct consideration by itself.

Several of our old English writers, though they have not mentioned the African Slave Trade, or the slavery consequent upon it, in their respective works, have yet given their testimony of condemnation against both. Thus our great Milton:—

O execrable son, so to aspire, Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurpt, from God not given; He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord, such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free.

I might mention Bishop Saunderson and others, who bore a testimony equally strong against the lawfulness of trading in the persons of men, and of holding them in bondage; but as I mean to confine myself to those who have favoured the cause of the Africans specifically, I cannot admit their names into any of the classes which have been announced.

Of those, who compose the first class, defined as it has now been, I cannot name any individual who took a part in this cause till between the years 1670 and 1680; for in the year 1640, and for a few years afterwards, the nature of the trade and of the slavery was but little known, except to a few individuals, who were concerned in them; and it is obvious that these would neither endanger their own interest nor proclaim their own guilt by exposing it. The first, whom I shall mention is Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the established church. This pious divine wrote a treatise upon the subject, which he dedicated to the then archbishop of Canterbury. He gave it to the world, at the time mentioned, under the title of "The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate." In this treatise he lays open the situation of these oppressed people, of whose sufferings he had been an eye-witness in the island of Barbados. He calls forth the pity of the reader in an affecting manner, and exposes with a nervous eloquence the brutal sentiments and conduct of their oppressors. This seems to have been the first work undertaken in England expressly in favour of the cause.

The next person, whom I shall mention, is Richard Baxter, the celebrated divine among the nonconformists. In his Christian Directory, published about the same time as The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate, he gives advice to those masters in foreign plantations, who have negroes and other slaves. In this he protests loudly against this trade. He says expressly that they, who go out as pirates, and take away poor Africans, or people of another land, who never forfeited life or liberty, and make them slaves and sell them, are the worst of robbers, and ought to be considered as the common enemies of mankind; and that they who buy them, and use them as mere beasts for their own convenience, regardless of their spiritual welfare, are fitter to be called demons than christians. He then proposes several queries, which he answers in a clear and forcible manner, showing the great inconsistency of this traffic, and the necessity of treating those then in bondage with tenderness and a due regard to their spiritual concerns.

The Directory of Baxter was succeeded by a publication called Friendly Advice to the Planters in three parts. The first of these was, A brief Treatise of the principal Fruits and Herbs that grow in Barbados, Jamaica, and other Plantations in the West Indies. The second was, The Negroes' Complaint, or their hard Servitude, and the Cruelties practised upon them by divers of their Masters professing Christianity. And the third was, A Dialogue between an Ethiopian and a Christian, his Master, in America. In the last of these, Thomas Tryon, who was the author, inveighs both against the commerce and the slavery of the Africans, and in a striking manner examines each by the touchstone of reason, humanity, justice, and religion.

In the year 1696, Southern brought forward his celebrated tragedy of Oronooko, by means of which many became enlightened upon the subject, and interested in it. For this tragedy was not a representation of fictitious circumstances, but of such as had occurred in the colonies, and as had been communicated in a publication by Mrs. Behn.

The person who seems to have noticed the subject next was Dr. Primatt. In his Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy, and on the Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals, he takes occasion to advert to the subject of the African Slave Trade. "It has pleased God," says he, "to cover some men with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to enslave and tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or black, such he is by God's appointment, and, abstractly considered, is neither a subject for pride, nor an object of contempt."

After Dr. Primatt, we come to Baron Montesquieu, "Slavery," says he, "is not good in itself. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing from virtuous motives; not to the master, because he contracts among his slaves all sorts of bad habits, and accustoms himself to the neglect of all the moral virtues. He becomes haughty, passionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel." And with respect to this particular species of slavery, he proceeds to say, "It is impossible to allow the negroes are men, because, if we allow them to be men, it will begin to be believed that we ourselves are not Christians."

Hutcheson, in his System of Moral Philosophy, endeavours to show, that he who detains another by force in slavery, can make no good title to him, and adds, "Strange that in any nation where a sense of liberty prevails, and where the Christian religion is professed, custom and high prospect of gain can so stupify the consciences of men, and all sense of natural justice, that they can hear such computations made about the value of their fellow-men and their liberty, without abhorrence and indignation!"

Foster, in his Discourses on Natural Religion and Social Virtue, calls the slavery under our consideration "a criminal and outrageous violation of the natural rights of mankind." I am sorry that I have not room to say all that he says on this subject. Perhaps the following beautiful extracts may suffice:—

"But notwithstanding this, we ourselves, who profess to be Christians, and boast of the peculiar advantages we enjoy by means of an express revelation of our duty from heaven, are in effect these very untaught and rude heathen countries. With all our superior light, we instil into those whom we call savage and barbarous, the most despicable opinion of human nature. We, to the utmost of our power, weaken and dissolve the universal tie that binds and unites mankind. We practise what we should exclaim against as the utmost excess of cruelty and tyranny, if nations of the world, differing in colour and form of government from ourselves, were so possessed of empire as to be able to reduce us to a state of unmerited and brutish servitude. Of consequence, we sacrifice our reason, our humanity, our Christianity, to an unnatural sordid gain. We teach other nations to despise and trample under foot all the obligations of social virtue. We take the most effectual method to prevent the propagation of the Gospel, by representing it as a scheme of power and barbarous oppression, and an enemy to the natural privileges and rights of man."

"Perhaps all that I have now offered may be of very little weight to restrain this enormity, this aggravated iniquity. However, I shall still have the satisfaction of having entered my private protest against a practice which, in my opinion, bids that God, who is the God and Father of the Gentiles unconverted to Christianity, most daring and bold defiance, and spurns at all the principles both of natural and revealed religion."

The next author is Sir Richard Steele, who, by means of the affecting story of Inkle and Yarico, holds up this trade again to our abhorrence.

In the year 1735, Atkins, who was a surgeon in the navy, published his Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies, in his Majesty's ships Swallow and Weymouth. In this work he describes openly the manner of making the natives slaves, such as by kidnapping, by unjust accusations and trials, and by other nefarious means. He states also the cruelties practised upon them by the white people, and the iniquitous ways and dealings of the latter, and answers their argument, by which they insinuated that the condition of the Africans was improved by their transportation to other countries.

From this time, the trade beginning to be better known, a multitude of persons of various stations and characters sprung up, who by exposing it, are to be mentioned among the forerunners and coadjutors in the cause.

Pope, in his Essay on Man, where he endeavours to show that happiness in the present depends, among other things, upon the hope of a future state, takes an opportunity of exciting compassion in behalf of the poor African, while he censures the avarice and cruelty of his master:—

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky-way; Yet simple Nature to his hope was given Behind the cloud-topt hill an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

Thomson also, in his Seasons, marks this traffic as destructive and cruel, introducing the well-known fact of sharks following the vessels employed in it:—

Increasing still the sorrows of those storms, His jaws horrific arm'd with three-fold fate, Here dwells the direful shark. Lured by the scent Of steaming crowds, of rank disease, and death; Behold! he rushing cuts the briny flood, Swift as the gale can bear the ship along, And from the partners of that cruel trade; Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, Demands his share of prey, demands themselves. The stormy fates descend: one death involves Tyrants and slaves; when straight their mangled limbs Crashing at once, he dyes the purple seas With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.

Neither was Richard Savage forgetful in his poems of the Injured Africans: he warns their oppressors of a day of retribution for their barbarous conduct. Having personified Public Spirit, he makes her speak on the subject in the following manner:—

Let by my specious name no tyrants rise, And cry, while they enslave, they civilize! Know, Liberty and I are still the same Congenial—ever mingling flame with flame! Why must I Afric's sable children see Vended for slaves, though born by nature free, The nameless tortures cruel minds invent Those to subject whom Nature equal meant? If these you dare (although unjust success Empowers you now unpunished, to oppress), Revolving empire you and yours may doom— (Rome all subdu'd—yet Vandals vanquish'd Rome) Yes—Empire may revolt—give them the day, And yoke may yoke, and blood may blood repay.

Wallis, in his System of the Laws of Scotland, maintains, that "neither men nor governments have a right to sell those of their own species. Men and their liberty are neither purchaseable nor saleable." And, after arguing the case, he says, "This is the law of nature, which is obligatory on all men, at all times, and in all places.—Would not any of us, who should be snatched by pirates from his native land, think himself cruelly abused, and at all times entitled to be free? Have not these unfortunate Africans, who meet with the same cruel fate, the same right? Are they not men as well as we? And have they not the same sensibility? Let us not, therefore, defend or support an usage, which is contrary to all the laws of humanity."

In the year 1750, the reverend Griffith Hughes, rector of St. Lucy, in Barbados, published his Natural History of that island. He took an opportunity, in the course of it, of laying open to the world the miserable situation of the poor Africans, and the waste of them by hard labour and other cruel means, and he had the generosity to vindicate their capacities from the charge, which they who held them in bondage brought against them, as a justification of their own wickedness in continuing to deprive them of the rights of men.

Edmund Burke, in his account of the European settlements, (for this work is usually attributed to him,) complains "that the Negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer, in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time. Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste, which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth." And he goes on to advise the planters, for the sake of their own interest, to behave like good men, good masters, and good Christians, and to impose less labour upon their slaves, and to give them recreation on some of the grand festivals, and to instruct them in religion, as certain preventives of their decrease.

An anonymous author of a pamphlet, entitled, An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America, seems to have come forward next. Speaking of slavery there, he says, "It is shocking to humanity, violative of every generous sentiment, abhorrent utterly from the Christian religion.—There cannot be a more dangerous maxim than that necessity is a plea for injustice, for who shall fix the degree of this necessity? What villain so atrocious, who may not urge this excuse, or, as Milton has happily expressed it,

And with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excuse his devilish deed?

"That our colonies," he continues, "want people, is a very weak argument for so inhuman a violation of justice.—Shall a civilized, a Christian nation encourage slavery, because the barbarous, savage, lawless African hath done it? To what end do we profess a religion whose dictates we so flagrantly violate? Wherefore have we that pattern of goodness and humanity, if we refuse to follow it? How long shall we continue a practice which policy rejects, justice condemns, and piety revolts at?"

The poet Shenstone, who comes next in order, seems to have written an elegy on purpose to stigmatize this trade. Of this elegy I shall copy only the following parts:—

See the poor native quit the Libyan shores, Ah! not in love's delightful fetters bound! No radiant smile his dying peace restores, No love, nor fame, nor friendship, heals his wound.

Let vacant bards display their boasted woes; Shall I the mockery of grief display? No; let the muse his piercing pangs disclose, Who bleeds and weeps his sum of life away!

On the wild heath in mournful guise he stood, Ere the shrill boatswain gave the hated sign; He dropt a tear unseen into the flood, He stole one secret moment to repine—

"Why am I ravish'd from my native strand? What savage race protects this impious gain? Shall foreign plagues infest this teeming land, And more than sea-born monsters plough the main?

Here the dire locusts' horrid swarms prevail; Here the blue asps with livid poison swell; Here the dry dipsa writhes his sinuous mail; Can we not here secure from envy dwell?

When the grim lion urged his cruel chase, When the stern panther sought his midnight prey; What fate reserved me for this Christian race? O race more polished, more severe than they!

Yet shores there are, bless'd shores for us remain, And favour'd isles, with golden fruitage crown'd, Where tufted flow'rets paint the verdant plain, And every breeze shall medicine every wound."

In the year 1755, Dr. Hayter, bishop of Norwich, preached a sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in which he bore his testimony against the continuance of this trade.

Dyer, in his poem called The Fleece, expresses his sorrow on account of this barbarous trade, and looks forward to a day of retributive justice on account of the introduction of such an evil.

In the year 1760, a pamphlet appeared, entitled, Two Dialogues on the Man-trade, by John Philmore. This name is supposed to be an assumed one. The author, however, discovers himself to have been both an able and a zealous advocate in favour of the African race.

Malachi Postlethwaite, in his Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, proposes a number of queries on the subject of the Slave Trade. I have not room to insert them at full length, but I shall give the following as the substance of some of them to the reader: "Whether this commerce be not the cause of incessant wars among the Africans—Whether the Africans, if it were abolished, might not become as ingenious, as humane, as industrious, and as capable of arts, manufactures, and trades, as even the bulk of Europeans—Whether, if it were abolished, a much more profitable trade might not be substituted, and this to the very centre of their extended country, instead of the trifling portion which now subsists upon their coasts—And whether the great hindrance to such a new and advantageous commerce has not wholly proceeded from that unjust, inhuman, unchristianlike traffic, called the Slave Trade, which is carried on by the Europeans." The public proposal of these and other queries by a man of so great commercial knowledge as Postlethwaite, and by one who was himself a member of the African Committee, was of great service in exposing the impolicy as well as immorality of the Slave Trade.

In the year 1761, Thomas Jeffery published an account of a part of North America, in which he lays open the miserable state of the slaves in the West Indies, both as to their clothing, their food, their labour, and their punishments. But, without going into particulars, the general account be gives of them is affecting: "It is impossible," he says, "for a human heart to reflect upon the slavery of these dregs of mankind, without in some measure feeling for their misery, which ends but with their lives—nothing can be more wretched than the condition of this people."

Sterne, in his account of the Negro girl in his Life of Tristram Shandy, took decidedly the part of the oppressed Africans. The pathetic, witty, and sentimental manner, in which he handled this subject, occasioned many to remember it, and procured a certain portion of feeling in their favour.

Rousseau contributed not a little in his day to the same end.

Bishop Warburton, preached a sermon in the year 1766, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in which he took up the cause of the miserable Africans, and in which he severely reprobated their oppressors. The language in this sermon is so striking, that I shall make an extract from it. "From the free savages," says he, "I now come to the savages in bonds. By these I mean the vast multitudes yearly stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to their great idol, the god of gain. But what then say these sincere worshippers of Mammon? They are our own property which we offer up,—Gracious God! to talk, as of herds of cattle, of property in rational creatures, creatures endued with all our faculties, possessing all our qualities but that of colour, our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense? But, alas! what is there, in the infinite abuses of society, which does not shock them! Yet nothing is more certain in itself and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to assert his freedom.

"In excuse of this violation it hath been pretended, that though, indeed, these miserable outcasts of humanity be torn from their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby become the happier, and their condition the more eligible. But who are you, who pretend to judge of another man's happiness; that state which each man under the guidance of his Maker forms for himself, and not one man for another? To know what constitutes mine or your happiness is the sole prerogative of him who created us, and cast us in so various and different moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhappiness amidst their native woods and deserts? or rather let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their lordly masters, where they see, indeed, the accommodations of civil life, but see them all pass to others, themselves unbenefited by them? Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness, and then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a part; a return so passionately longed for, that, despairing of happiness here, that is, of escaping the chains of their cruel task-masters, they console themselves with feigning it to be the gracious reward of heaven in their future state."

About this time certain cruel and wicked practices, which must now be mentioned, had arrived at such a height, and had become so frequent in the metropolis, as to produce of themselves other coadjutors to the cause.

Before the year 1700, planters, merchants, and others, resident in the West Indies, but coming to England, were accustomed to bring with them certain slaves to act as servants with them during their stay. The latter, seeing the freedom and the happiness of servants in this country, and considering what would be their own hard fate on their return to the islands, frequently absconded. Their masters of course made search after them, and often had them seized and carried away by force. It was, however, thrown out by many on these occasions, that the English laws did not sanction such proceedings, for that all persons who were baptized became free. The consequence of this was, that most of the slaves, who came over with their masters, prevailed upon some pious clergyman to baptize them. They took of course godfathers of such citizens as had the generosity to espouse their cause. When they were seized they usually sent to these, if they had an opportunity, for their protection. And in the result, their godfathers, maintaining that they had been baptized, and that they were free on this account as well as by the general tenour of the law of England, dared those who had taken possession of them to send them out of the kingdom.

The planters, merchants, and others, being thus circumstanced, knew not what to do. They were afraid of taking their slaves away by force, and they were equally afraid of bringing any of the cases before a public court. In this dilemma, in 1729, they applied to York and Talbot, the attorney and solicitor-general for the time being, and obtained the following strange opinion from them:—"We are of opinion, that a slave by coming from the West Indies into Great Britain or Ireland, either with or without his master, does not become free, and that his master's right and property in him is not thereby determined or varied, and that baptism doth not bestow freedom on him, nor make any alteration in his temporal condition in these kingdoms. We are also of opinion, that the master may legally compel him to return again to the plantations."

This cruel and illegal opinion was delivered in the year 1729. The planters, merchants, and others, gave it of course all the publicity in their power. And the consequences were as might easily have been apprehended. In a little time slaves absconding were advertised in the London papers as runaways, and rewards offered for the apprehension of them, in the same brutal manner as we find them advertised in the land of slavery. They were advertised also, in the same papers, to be sold by auction, sometimes by themselves, and at others with horses, chaises, and harness? They were seized also by their masters, or by persons employed by them, in the very streets, and dragged from thence to the ships; and so unprotected now were these poor slaves, that persons in nowise concerned with them began to institute a trade in their persons, making agreements with captains of ships going to the West Indies to put them on board at a certain price. This last instance shows how far human nature is capable of going, and is an answer to those persons who have denied that kidnapping in Africa was a source of supplying the Slave Trade. It shows, as all history does from the time of Joseph, that where there is a market for the persons of human beings, all kinds of enormities will be practised to obtain them.

These circumstances then, as I observed before, did not fail of producing new coadjutors in the cause. And first they produced that able and indefatigable advocate, Mr. Granville Sharp. This gentleman is to be distinguished from those who preceded him by this particular, that, whereas these were only writers, he was both a writer and an actor in the cause. In fact, he was the first labourer in it in England. By the words "actor" and "labourer," I mean that he determined upon a plan of action in behalf of the oppressed Africans, to the accomplishment of which he devoted a considerable portion of his time, talents, and substance. What Mr. Sharp has done to merit the title of coadjutor in this high sense, I shall now explain. The following is a short history of the beginning and of the course of his labours:—

In the year 1765, Mr. David Lisle had brought over from Barbados Jonathan Strong, an African slave, as his servant. He used the latter in a barbarous manner at his lodgings in Wapping, but particularly by beating him over the head with a pistol, which occasioned his head to swell. When the swelling went down, a disorder fell into his eyes, which threatened the loss of them. To this an ague and fever succeeded, and a lameness in both his legs.

Jonathan Strong, having been brought into this deplorable situation, and being therefore wholly useless, was left by his master to go whither he pleased. He applied accordingly to Mr. William Sharp, the surgeon, for his advice, as to one who gave up a portion of his time to the healing of the diseases of the poor. It was here that Mr. Granville Sharp, the brother of the former, saw him. Suffice it to say, that in process of time he was cured. During this time Mr. Granville Sharp, pitying his hard case, supplied him with money, and he afterwards got him a situation in the family of Mr. Brown, an apothecary, to carry out medicines.

In this new situation, when Strong had become healthy and robust in his appearance, his master happened to see him. The latter immediately formed the design of possessing him again. According, when he had found out his residence, he procured John Ross, keeper of the Poultry-counter, and William Miller, an officer under the Lord Mayor, to kidnap him. This was done by sending for him to a public-house in Fenchurch-street, and then seizing him. By these he was conveyed, without any warrant, to the Poultry-counter, where he was sold by his master, to John Kerr, for thirty pounds.

Strong, in this situation, sent, as was usual, to his godfathers, John London and Stephen Nail, for their protections. They went, but were refused admittance to him. At length he sent for Mr. Granville Sharp: the latter went, but they still refused access to the prisoner. He insisted, however, upon seeing him, and charged the keeper of the prison at his peril to deliver him up, till he had been carried before a magistrate.

Mr. Sharp, immediately upon this, waited upon Sir Robert Kite, the then lord mayor, and entreated him to send for Strong and to hear his case. A day was accordingly appointed. Mr. Sharp attended, and also William McBean, a notary public, and David Laird, captain of the ship Thames, which was to have conveyed Strong to Jamaica, in behalf of the purchaser, John Kerr. A long conversation ensued, in which the opinion of York and Talbot was quoted. Mr. Sharp made his observations. Certain lawyers who were present seemed to be staggered at the case, but inclined rather to recommit the prisoner: the lord mayor, however, discharged Strong, as he had been taken up without a warrant.

As soon as this determination was made known, the parties began to move off. Captain Laird, however, who kept close to Strong, laid hold of him before he had quitted the room, and said aloud, "Then I now seize him as my slave." Upon this Mr. Sharp put his hand upon Laird's shoulder, and pronounced these words: "I charge you, in the name of the king, with an assault upon the person of Jonathan Strong, and all these are my witnesses." Laird was greatly intimidated by this charge, made in the presence of the lord mayor and others, and, fearing a prosecution, let his prisoner go, leaving him to be conveyed away by Mr. Sharp.

Mr. Sharp having been greatly affected by this case, and foreseeing how much he might be engaged in others of a similar nature, thought it time that the law of the land should be known upon this subject: he applied, therefore, to Dr. Blackstone, afterwards Judge Blackstone, for his opinion upon it. He was, however, not satisfied with it when he received it; nor could he obtain any satisfactory answer from several other lawyers, to whom he afterwards applied. The truth is that the opinion of York and Talbot, which had been made public and acted upon by the planters, merchants, and others, was considered of high authority, and scarcely any one dared to question the legality of it. In this situation Mr. Sharp saw no means of help but in his own industry, and he determined immediately to give up two or three years to the study of the English law, that he might the better advocate the cause of these miserable people. The result of these studies was the publication of a book in the year 1769, which he called, A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery in England. In this work he refuted, in the clearest manner, the opinion of York and Talbot: he produced against it the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice Holt, who, many years before, had determined that every slave coming into England became free: he attacked and refuted it again by a learned and laborious inquiry into all the principles of Villenage. He refuted it again by showing it to be an axiom in the British constitution, "That every man in England was free to sue for and defend his rights, and that force could not be used without a legal process," leaving it to the judges to determine whether an African was a man. He attacked also the opinion of Judge Blackstone, and showed where his error lay. This valuable book, containing these and other kinds of arguments on the subject, he distributed, but particularly among the lawyers, giving them an opportunity of refuting or acknowledging the doctrines it contained.

While Mr. Sharp was engaged in this work, another case offered, in which he took a part: this was in the year 1768. Hylas, an African slave, prosecuted a person of the name of Newton for having kidnapped his wife, and sent her to the West Indies. The result of the trial was, that damages to the amount of a shilling were given, and the defendant was bound to bring back the woman, either by the first ship, or in six months from this decision of the court.

But soon after the work just mentioned was out, and when Mr. Sharp was better prepared, a third case occurred: this happened in the year 1770. Robert Stapylton, who lived at Chelsea, in conjunction with John Malony and Edward Armstrong, two watermen, seized the person of Thomas Lewis, an African slave, in a dark night, and dragged him to a boat lying in the Thames; they then gagged him and tied him with a cord, and rowed him down to a ship, and put him on board to be sold as a slave in Jamaica. This base action took place near the garden of Mrs. Banks, the mother of the late Sir Joseph Banks. Lewis, it appears, on being seized, screamed violently. The servants of Mrs. Banks, who heard his cries, ran to his assistance, but the boat was gone. On informing their mistress of what had happened, she sent for Mr. Sharp, who began now to be known as the friend of the helpless Africans, and professed her willingness to incur the expense of bringing the delinquents to justice. Mr. Sharp, with some difficulty, procured a habeas corpus, in consequence of which Lewis was brought from Gravesend just as the vessel was on the point of sailing. An action was then commenced against Stapylton, who defended himself on the plea, "That Lewis belonged to him as his slave." In the course of the trial, Mr. Dunning, who was counsel for Lewis, paid Mr. Sharp a handsome compliment; for he held in his hand Mr. Sharp's book, on the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery in England, while he was pleading; and in his address to the jury he spoke and acted thus:—"I shall submit to you," says Mr. Dunning, "what my ideas are upon such evidence, reserving to myself an opportunity of discussing it more particularly, and reserving to myself a right to insist upon a position, which I will maintain (and here he held up the book to the notice of those present,) in any place and in any court of the kingdom, that our laws admit of no such property[A]." The result of the trial was, that the jury pronounced the plaintiff not to have been the property of the defendant, several of them crying out, "No property, no property."

[Footnote A: It is lamentable to think that the same Mr. Dunning, in a cause of this kind, which came on afterwards, took the opposite side of the question.]

After this one or two other trials came on, in which the oppressor was defeated, and several cases occurred in which poor slaves were liberated from the holds of vessels and other places of confinement, by the exertions of Mr. Sharp. One of these cases was singular. The vessels on board which a poor African had been dragged and confined, had reached the Downs, and had actually got under weigh for the West Indies: in two or three hours she would have been out of sight; but just at this critical moment the writ of habeas corpus was carried on board. The officer who served it on the captain saw the miserable African chained to the mainmast, bathed in tears, and casting a last mournful look on the land of freedom, which was fast receding from his sight. The captain, on receiving the writ, became outrageous; but knowing the serious consequences of resisting the law of the land, he gave up his prisoner, whom the officer carried safe, but now crying for joy, to the shore.

But though the injured Africans, whose causes had been tried, escaped slavery, and though many who had been forcibly carried into dungeons, ready to be transported into the Colonies, had been delivered out of them, Mr. Sharp was not easy in his mind: not one of the cases had yet been pleaded on the broad ground, "Whether an African slave, coming into England, became free?" This great question had been hitherto studiously avoided; it was still, therefore, left in doubt. Mr. Sharp was almost daily acting as if it had been determined, and as if he had been following the known law of the land: he wished, therefore, that the next cause might be argued upon this principle. Lord Mansfield too, who had been biassed by the opinion of York and Talbot, began to waver in consequence of the different pleadings he had heard on this subject: he saw also no end of trials like these, till the law should be ascertained, and he was anxious for a decision on the same basis as Mr. Sharp. In this situation the following case offered, which was agreed upon for the determination of this important question.

James Somerset, an African slave, had been brought to England by his master, Charles Stewart, in November 1769. Somerset in process of time left him. Stewart took an opportunity of seizing him, and had him conveyed on board the Ann and Mary, Captain Knowles, to be carried out of the kingdom and sold as a slave in Jamaica: the question was, "Whether a slave, by coming into England, became free?"

In order that time might be given for ascertaining the law fully on this head, the case was argued at three different sittings. First, in January, 1772; secondly, in February, 1772; and thirdly, in May, 1772. And that no decision otherwise than what the law warranted might be given, the opinion of the judges was taken upon the pleadings. The great and glorious result of the trial was, "That as soon as ever any slave set his foot upon English territory, he became free."

Thus ended the great case of Somerset, which, having, been determined after so deliberate an investigation of the law, can never be reversed while the British Constitution remains. The eloquence displayed in it by those who were engaged on the side of liberty, was perhaps never exceeded on any occasion; and the names of the counsellors Davy, Glynn, Hargrave, Mansfield, and Alleyne, ought always to be remembered with gratitude by the friends of this great cause. For when we consider in how many crowded courts they pleaded, and the number of individuals in these, whose minds they enlightened, and whose hearts they interested in the subject, they are certainly to be put down as no small instruments in the promotion of it; but chiefly to him, under Divine Providence, are we to give the praise, who became the first great actor in it, who devoted his time, his talents, and his substance to this Christian undertaking, and by whose laborious researches the very pleaders themselves were instructed and benefited. By means of his almost incessant vigilance and attention, and unwearied efforts, the poor African ceased to be hunted in our streets as a beast of prey. Miserable as the roof might be, under which he slept, he slept in security. He walked by the side of the stately ship, and he feared no dungeon in her hold. Nor ought we, as Englishmen, to be less grateful to this distinguished individual than the African ought to be upon this occasion. To him we owe it, that we no longer see our public papers polluted by hateful advertisements of the sale of the human species, or that we are no longer distressed by the perusal of impious rewards for bringing back the poor and the helpless into slavery, or that we are prohibited the disgusting spectacle of seeing man bought by his fellow-man. To him, in short, we owe this restoration of the beauty of our constitution—this prevention of the continuance of our national disgrace.

I shall say but little more of Mr. Sharp at present, than that he felt it his duty, immediately after the trial, to write to Lord North, then principal minister of state, warning him in the most earnest manner, to abolish immediately both the trade and the slavery of the human species in all the British dominions, as utterly irreconcileable with the principles of the British constitution, and the established religion of the land.

Among other coadjutors, whom the cruel and wicked practices which have now been so amply detailed brought forward, was a worthy clergyman, whose name I have not yet been able to learn. He endeavoured to interest the public feeling in behalf of the injured Africans, by writing an epilogue to the Padlock, in which Mungo appeared as a black servant. This epilogue is so appropriate to the case, that I cannot but give it to the reader. Mungo enters, and thus addresses the audience:—

Thank you, my massas! have you laugh your fill? Then let me speak, nor take that freedom ill. E'en from my tongue some heart-felt truths may fall, And outraged Nature claims the care of all. My tale in any place would force a tear, But calls for stronger, deeper feelings here; For whilst I tread the free-born British land, Whilst now before me crowded Britons stand,— Vain, vain that glorious privilege to me, I am a slave, where all things else are free.

Yet was I born, as you are, no man's slave, An heir to all that liberal Nature gave; My mind can reason, and my limbs can move The same as yours; like yours my heart can love; Alike my body food and sleep sustain; And e'en like yours—feels pleasure, want, and pain. One sun rolls o'er us, common skies surround; One globe supports us, and one grave must bound.

Why then am I devoid of all to live That manly comforts to a man can give?

To live—untaught religion's soothing balm, Or life's choice arts; to live—unknown the calm, Of soft domestic ease; those sweets of life, The duteous offspring, and th' endearing wife? To live—to property and rights unknown, Not e'en the common benefits my own! No arm to guard me from Oppression's rod, My will subservient to a tyrant's nod! No gentle hand, when life is in decay, To soothe my pains, and charm my cares away; But helpless left to quit the horrid stage, Harassed in youth, and desolate in age!

But I was born in Afric's tawny strand, And you in fair Britannia's fairer land; Comes freedom, then, from colour?—Blush with shame! And let strong Nature's crimson mark your blame. I speak to Britons.—Britons—then behold A man by, Britons snared, and seized, and sold! And yet no British statute damns the deed, Nor do the more than murderous villains bleed.

O sons of Freedom! equalize your laws, Be all consistent, plead the negro's cause; That all the nations in your code may see The British negro, like the Briton, free. But, should he supplicate your laws in vain, To break, for ever, this disgraceful chain, At least, let gentle usage so abate The galling terrors of its passing state, That he may share kind Heaven's all social plan; For, though no Briton, Mungo is—a man.

I may now add, that few theatrical pieces had a greater run than the Padlock; and that this epilogue, which was attached to it soon after it came out, procured a good deal of feeling for the unfortunate sufferers, whose cause it was intended to serve.

Another coadjutor, to whom these cruel and wicked practices gave birth, was Thomas Day, the celebrated author of Sandford and Merton, and whose virtues were well known among those who had the happiness of his friendship. In the year 1773 he published a poem, which he wrote expressly in behalf of the oppressed Africans. He gave it the name of The Dying Negro. The preface to it was written in an able manner by his friend Counsellor Bicknell, who is therefore to be ranked among the coadjutors in this great cause. The poem was founded on a simple fact, which had taken place a year or two before. A poor negro had been seized in London, and forcibly put on board a ship, where he destroyed himself, rather than return to the land of slavery. To the poem is affixed a frontispiece, in which the negro is represented. He is made to stand in an attitude of the most earnest address to heaven, in the course of which, with the fatal dagger in his hand, he breaks forth in the following words:

To you this unpolluted blood I pour, To you that spirit, which ye gave, restore.

This poem, which was the first ever written expressly on the subject, was read extensively; and it added to the sympathy in favour of suffering humanity, which was now beginning to show itself in the kingdom.

About this time the first edition of the Essay an Truth made its appearance in the world. Dr. Beattie took an opportunity, in this work, of vindicating the intellectual powers of the Africans from the aspersions of Hume, and of condemning their slavery as a barbarous piece of policy, and as inconsistent with the free and generous spirit of the British nation.

In the year 1774, John Wesley, the celebrated divine, to whose pious labours the religious world will long be indebted, undertook the cause of the poor Africans. He had been in America, and had seen and pitied their hard condition. The work which he gave to the world in consequence, was entitled Thoughts on Slavery. Mr. Wesley had this great cause much at heart, and frequently recommended it to the support of those who attended his useful ministry.

In the year 1776, the Abbe Proyart brought out, at Paris, his History of Loango, and other kingdoms in Africa, in which he did ample justice to the moral and intellectual character of the natives there.

The same year produced two new friends in England, in the same cause, but in a line in which no one had yet moved. David Hartley, then a member of parliament for Hull, and the son of Dr. Hartley who wrote the Essay on Man, found it impossible any longer to pass over without notice the case of the oppressed Africans. He had long felt for their wretched condition, and, availing himself of his legislative situation, he made a motion in the House of Commons, "That the Slave Trade was contrary to the laws of God, and the rights of men." In order that he might interest the members as much as possible in his motion, he had previously obtained some of the chains in use in this cruel traffic, and had laid them upon the table of the House of Commons. His motion was seconded by that great patriot and philanthropist, Sir George Saville. But though I am now to state that it failed, I cannot but consider it as a matter of pleasing reflection, that this great subject was first introduced into parliament by those who were worthy of it; by those who had clean hands and an irreproachable character, and to whom no motive of party or faction could be imputed, but only such as must have arisen from a love of justice, a true feeling of humanity, and a proper sense of religion.

About this time two others, men of great talents and learning, promoted the cause of the injured Africans, by the manner in which they introduced them to notice in their respective works.

Dr. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, had, so early as the year 1759, held them up in an honourable, and their tyrants in a degrading light. "There is not a Negro from the coast of Africa, who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtue neither of the countries they came from, nor of those they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished." And now, in 1776, in his Wealth of Nations he showed in a forcible manner (for he appealed to the interest of those concerned,) the dearness of African labour; or the impolicy of employing slaves.

Professor Millar, in his Origin of Ranks, followed Dr. Smith on the same ground. He explained the impolicy of slavery in general, by its bad effects upon industry, population, and morals. These effects he attached to the system of agriculture as followed in our islands. He showed, besides, how little pains were taken, or how few contrivances were thought of, to ease the labourers there. He contended that the Africans ought to be better treated, and to be raised to a better condition; and he ridiculed the inconsistency of those who held them in bondage. "It affords," says he, "a curious spectacle to observe that the same people, who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow-creatures into circumstances by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost of every species of right. Fortune, perhaps, never produced a situation more calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles." It is a great honour to the University of Glasgow, that it should have produced, before any public agitation of this question, three professors[A], all of whom bore their public testimony against the continuance of the cruel trade.

[Footnote A: The other was Professor Hutcheson, before mentioned in p. 56.]

From this time, or from about the year 1776, to about the year 1782, I am to put down three other coadjutors, whose labours seem to have come in a right season for the promotion of the cause.

The first of these was Dr. ROBERTSON. In his History of America he laid open many facts relative to this subject. He showed himself a warm friend both of the Indians and Africans. He lost no opportunity of condemning that trade, which brought the latter into bondage: "a trade," says he, "which is no less repugnant to the feelings of humanity than to the principles of religion." And in his Charles the Fifth, he showed in a manner that was clear, and never to be controverted, that Christianity was the great cause in the twelfth century of extirpating slavery from the west of Europe. By the establishment of this fact, he rendered important services to the oppressed Africans. For if Christianity, when it began to be felt in the heart, dictated the abolition of slavery, it certainly became those who lived in a Christian country, and who professed the Christian religion, to put an end to this cruel trade.

The second was the Abbe Raynal. This author gave an account of the laws, government, and religion of Africa, of the produce of it, of the manners of its inhabitants, of the trade in slaves, of the manner of procuring these, with several other particulars relating to the subject. And at the end of his account, fearing lest the good advice he had given for making the condition of the slaves more comfortable should be construed into an approbation of such a traffic, he employed several pages in showing its utter inconsistency with sound policy, justice, reason, humanity, and religion.

"I will not here," says he, "so far debase myself as to enlarge the ignominious list of those writers who devote their abilities to justify by policy what morality condemns. In an age where so many errors are boldly laid open, it would be unpardonable to conceal any truth that is interesting to humanity. If whatever I have hitherto advanced hath seemingly tended only to alleviate the burden of slavery, the reason is, that it was first necessary to give some comfort to those unhappy beings whom we cannot set free, and convince their oppressors that they were cruel, to the prejudice of their real interests. But, in the mean time, till some considerable revolution shall make the evidence of this great truth felt, it may not be improper to pursue this subject further. I shall then first prove that there is no reason of state which can authorize slavery. I shall not be afraid to cite to the tribunal of reason and justice those governments which tolerate this cruelty, or which even are not ashamed to make it the basis of their power."

And a little further on he observes—"Will it be said that he, who wants to make me a slave, does me no injury; but that he only makes use of his rights? Where are those rights? Who hath stamped upon them so sacred a character as to silence mine?"

In the beginning of the next paragraph he speaks thus:—"He who supports the system of slavery is the enemy of the whole human race. He divides it into two societies of legal assassins; the oppressors, and the oppressed. It is the same thing as proclaiming to the world, if you would preserve your life, instantly take away mine, for I want to have yours."

Going on two pages further, we find these words:—"But the Negroes, they say, are a race born for slavery; their dispositions are narrow, treacherous, and wicked; they themselves allow the superiority of our understandings, and almost acknowledge the justice of our authority. Yes; the minds of the Negroes are contracted, because slavery destroys all the springs of the soul. They are wicked, but not equally so with you. They are treacherous, because they are under no obligation to speak truth to their tyrants. They acknowledge the superiority of our understanding, because we have abused their ignorance. They allow the justice of our authority, because we have abused their weakness."

"But these Negroes, it is further urged, were born slaves. Barbarians! will you persuade me that a man can be the property of a sovereign, a son the property of a father, a wife the property of a husband, a domestic the property of a master, a Negro the property of a planter?"

But I have no time to follow this animated author, even by short extracts, through the varied strains of eloquence which he displays upon this occasion. I can only say that his labours entitle him to a high station among the benefactors to the African race.

The third was Dr. PALEY, whose genius, talents, and learning have been so eminently displayed in his writings in the cause of natural and revealed religion. Dr. Paley did not write any essay expressly in favour of the Africans. But in his Moral Philosophy, where he treated on slavery, he took an opportunity of condemning, in very severe terms, the continuance of it. In this work he defined what slavery was, and how it might arise consistently with the law of nature; but he made an exception against that which arose from the African trade. "The Slave Trade," says he, "upon the coast of Africa, is not excused by these principles. When slaves in that country are brought to market, no questions, I believe, are asked about the origin or justice of the vendor's title. It may be presumed, therefore, that this title is not always, if it be ever, founded in any of the causes above assigned.

"But defect of right in the first purchase is the least crime with which this traffic is chargeable. The natives are excited to war and mutual depredation, for the sake of supplying their contracts, or furnishing the markets with slaves. With this the wickedness begins. The slaves, torn away from their parents, wives, and children, from their friends and companions, from their fields and flocks, from their home and country, are transported to the European settlements in America, with no other accommodation on ship-board than what is provided for brutes. This is the second stage of the cruelty, from which the miserable exiles are delivered, only to be placed, and that for life, in subjection to a dominion add system of laws, the most merciless and tyrannical that ever were tolerated upon the face of the earth: and from all that can be learned by the accounts of people upon the spot, the inordinate authority which the plantation-laws confer upon the slaveholder is exercised, by the English slaveholder especially, with rigour and brutality.

"But necessity is pretended, the name under which every enormity is attempted to be justified; and after all, what is the necessity? It has never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it is here, by hired servants. It is said, that it could not be cultivated with quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labour of slaves; by which means, a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells for sixpence, could not be afforded under sixpence-halfpenny—and this is the necessity!

"The great revolution which has taken place in the western world, may, probably, conduce (and who knows but that it was designed) to accelerate the fall of this abominable tyranny: and now that this contest and the passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed, perhaps, a season for reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its assistance to the support of an institution replete with human misery, was fit to be trusted with an empire, the most extensive that ever obtained in any age or quarter of the world."

The publication of these sentiments may be supposed to have produced an extensive effect. For The Moral Philosophy was adopted early by some of the colleges in our universities into the system of their education. It soon found its way also into most of the private libraries of the kingdom; and it was, besides, generally read and approved. Dr. Paley, therefore, must be considered, as having been a considerable coadjutor in interesting the mind of the public in favour of the oppressed Africans.

In the year 1783, we find Mr. Sharp coming again into notice. We find him at this time taking a part in a cause, the knowledge of which, in proportion as it was disseminated, produced an earnest desire among all disinterested persons for the abolition of the Slave Trade.

In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, Captain Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the seas in order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had been lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial which afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate, and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating, "that if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship; but that if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters." He selected, accordingly, one hundred and thirty-two of the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea; but the rest, with a noble resolution, would not suffer the officers to touch them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.

The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled act of wickedness was, that the captain discovered, when he made the proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this, that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a shower of rain fell and continued for three days immediately after the second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their vessels[A] with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the destruction of the third.

[Footnote A: It appeared that they filled six.]

Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a short-hand writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as principal minister of state. No notice, however, was taken by any of these, of the information which had been thus sent them.

But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence of the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an account of it by Mr. Sharp, in the newspapers, made such an impression upon others, that; new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find Thomas Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured Africans. He had lived to see his poem of The Dying Negro, which had been published in 1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had written a letter to a friend in America, who was the possessor of slaves, to dissuade him by a number of arguments from holding such property; and now, when the knowledge of the case of the ship Zong was spreading, he published that letter under the title of Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes.

In this same year, Dr. Porteus, Bishop of Chester, but now Bishop of London, came forward as a new advocate for the natives of Africa. The way in which he rendered them service, was by preaching a sermon in their behalf, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Of the wide circulation of this sermon, I shall say something in another place, but much more of the enlightened and pious author of it, who from this time never failed to aid, at every opportunity, the cause which he had so ably undertaken.

In the year 1784, Dr. GREGORY produced his Essays, Historical and Moral. He took an opportunity of disseminating in these a circumstantial knowledge of the Slave Trade, and an equal abhorrence of it at the same time. He explained the manner of procuring slaves in Africa; the treatment of them on the passage, (in which he mentioned the case of the ship Zong) and the wicked and cruel treatment of them in the colonies. He recited and refuted also the various arguments adduced in defence of the trade. He showed that it was destructive to our seamen. He produced many weighty arguments also against the slavery itself. He proposed clauses for an Act of Parliament for the abolition of both; showing the good both to England and her colonies from such a measure, and that a trade might be substituted in Africa, in various articles, for that which he proposed to suppress. By means of the diffusion of light like this, both of a moral and political nature; Dr. Gregory is entitled to be ranked among the benefactors to the African race.

In the same year, Gilbert Wakefield preached a sermon at Richmond, in Surrey, where, speaking of the people of this nation, he says, "Have we been as renowned for a liberal communication of our religion and our laws as for the possession of them! Have we navigated and conquered to save, to civilize, and to instruct; or to oppress, to plunder, and to destroy? Let India and Africa give the answer to these questions. The one we have exhausted of her wealth and her inhabitants by violence, by famine, and by every species of tyranny and murder. The children of the other we daily carry from off the land of their nativity; like sheep to the slaughter, to return no more. We tear them from every object of their affection, or, sad alternative, drag them together to the horrors of a mutual servitude! We keep them in the profoundest ignorance. We gall them in a tenfold chain, with an unrelenting spirit of barbarity, inconceivable to all but the spectators of it, unexampled among former and other nations, and unrecorded even in the bloody registers of heathen persecution. Such is the conduct of us enlightened Englishmen, reformed Christians! Thus have we profited by our superior advantages, by the favour of God, by the doctrines and example of a meek and lowly Savior. Will not the blessings which we have abused loudly testify against us? Will not the blood which we have shed cry from the ground for vengeance upon our sins?"

In the same year, James Ramsay, vicar of Teston in Kent, became also an able, zealous, and indefatigable patron of the African cause. This gentleman had resided nineteen years in the island of St. Christopher, where he had observed the treatment of the slaves, and had studied the laws relating to them. On his return to England, yielding to his own feelings of duty and the solicitations of some amiable friends, he published a work, which he called An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of the African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies. After having given an account of the relative situation of master and slave in various parts of the world, he explained the low and degrading situation which the Africans held in society in our own islands. He showed that their importance would be increased; and the temporal interest of their masters promoted, by giving them freedom, and by granting them other privileges. He showed the great difficulty of instructing them in the state in which they then were, and such as he himself had experienced, both in his private and public attempts, and such as others had experienced also. He stated the way in which private attempts of this nature might probably be successful. He then answered all objections against their capacities, as drawn from philosophy, form, anatomy, and observation; and vindicated these from his own experience. And lastly, he threw out ideas for the improvement of their condition, by an establishment of a greater number of spiritual pastors among them; by giving them more privileges than they then possessed; and by extending towards them the benefits of a proper police. Mr. Ramsay had no other motive for giving this work to the public, than that of humanity, of a wish to serve this much-injured part of the human species. For he compiled it at the hazard of forfeiting that friendship, which he had contracted with many during his residence in the islands, and of suffering much in his private property, as well as subjecting himself to the ill-will and persecution of numerous individuals.

The publication of this book by one who professed to have been so long resident in the islands, and to have been an eyewitness of facts, produced, as may easily be supposed, a good deal of conversation, and made a considerable impression, but particularly at this time, when a storm was visibly gathering over the heads of the oppressors of the African race. These circumstances occasioned one or two persons to attempt to answer it, and these answers brought Mr. Ramsay into the first controversy ever entered into on this subject, during which, as is the case in most controversies, the cause of truth was spread.

The works which Mr. Ramsay wrote upon this subject were, the essay just mentioned, in 1784. An Inquiry, also, into the Effects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in 1784; A Reply to Personal Invectives and Objections, in 1785; A Letter to James Tobin, Esq., in 1787; Objections to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with Answers; and An Examination of Harris's Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave Trade, in 1788; and An Address on the proposed Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in 1789. In short, from the time when he first took up the cause, he was engaged in it till his death, which was not a little accelerated by his exertions. He lived, however, to see this cause in a train of parliamentary inquiry, and he died satisfied; being convinced, as he often expressed, that the investigation must inevitably lead to the total abolition of the Slave Trade.

In the next year, that is, in the year 1785, another advocate was seen in Monsieur Necker, in his celebrated work on the French Finances, which had just been translated into the English language from the original work, in 1784. This virtuous statesman, after having given his estimate of the population and revenue of the French West Indian colonies, proceeds thus:—"The colonies of France contain, as we have seen, near five hundred thousand slaves, and it is from the number of these poor wretches that the inhabitants set a value on their plantations. What a dreadful prospect! and how profound a subject for reflection! Alas! how little are we both in our morality and our principles! We preach up humanity, and yet go every year to bind in chains twenty thousand natives of Africa! We call the Moors barbarians and ruffians, because they attack the liberty of Europeans at the risk of their own; yet these Europeans go, without danger, and as mere speculators, to purchase slaves by gratifying the avarice of their masters, and excite all those bloody scenes which are the usual preliminaries of this traffic!" He goes on still further in the same strain. He then shows the kind of power which has supported this execrable trade. He throws out the idea of a general compact, by which all the European nations should agree to abolish it; and he indulges the pleasing hope that it may take place even in the present generation.

In the same year we find other coadjutors coming before our view, but these in a line different from that in which any other belonging to this class had yet moved. Mr. George White, a clergyman of the established church, and Mr. John Chubb, suggested to Mr. William Tucket, the mayor of Bridgewater, where they resided, and to others of that town, the propriety of petitioning parliament for the abolition of the Slave Trade. This petition was agreed upon, and, when drawn up, was as follows:—

"The humble petition of the inhabitants of Bridgewater showeth,

"That your petitioners, reflecting with the deepest sensibility on the deplorable condition of that part of the human species, the African Negroes, who, by the most flagitious means, are reduced to slavery and misery in the British colonies, beg leave to address this honourable house in their behalf, and to express a just abhorrence of a system of oppression, which no prospect of private gain, no consideration of public advantage, no plea of political expediency, can sufficiently justify or excuse.

"That, satisfied as your petitioners are that this inhuman system meets with the general execration of mankind, they flatter themselves the day is not far distant when it will be universally abolished. And they most ardently hope to see a British parliament, by the extinction of that sanguinary traffic, extend the blessings of liberty to millions beyond this realm, held up to an enlightened world a glorious and merciful example, and stand in the defence of the violated rights of human nature."

This petition was presented by the Honourable Ann Poulet, and Alexander Hood, Esq., (afterwards Lord Bridport,) who were the members for the town of Bridgewater. It was ordered to lie on the table. The answer which these gentlemen gave to their constituents relative to the reception of it in the House of Commons is worthy of notice:—"There did not appear," say they in their common letter, "the least disposition to pay any further attention to it. Every one almost says that the abolition of the Slave Trade must immediately throw the West Indian islands into convulsions, and soon complete their utter ruin. Thus they will not trust Providence for its protection for so pious an undertaking."

In the year 1786, Captain J.S. Smith, of the royal navy, offered himself to the notice of the public in behalf of the African cause. Mr. Ramsay, as I have observed before, had become involved in a controversy in consequence of his support of it. His opponents not only attacked his reputation, but had the effrontery to deny his facts. This circumstance occasioned Captain Smith to come forward. He wrote a letter to his friend Mr. Hill, in which he stated that he had seen those things, while in the West Indies, which Mr. Ramsay had asserted to exist, but which had been so boldly denied. He gave, also, permission to Mr. Hill to publish this letter. Too much praise cannot be bestowed on Captain Smith, for thus standing forth in a noble cause, and in behalf of an injured character.

The last of the necessary forerunners and coadjutors of this class, whom I am to mention, was our much-admired poet, Cowper; and a great coadjutor he was, when we consider what value was put upon his sentiments, and the extraordinary circulation of his works. There are few persons who have not been properly impressed by the following lines:—

My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick with every day's report, Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, It does not feel for man. The natural bond Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colour'd like his own, and having power To inforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey. Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd, Make enemies of nations, who had else, Like kindred drops been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; And, worse than all, and most to be deplored As human Nature's broadest, foulest blot,— Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With stripes, that Mercy with a bleeding heart Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast. Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush And hang his head to think himself a man? I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd. No: dear as freedom is,—and in my heart's Just estimation prized above all price,— I had much rather be myself the slave, And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no slaves at home—then why abroad? And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd. Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall[A]. That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud And jealous of the blessing. Spread it, then, And let it circulate through every vein Of all your empire—that where Britain's power Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

[Footnote A: Expressions used in the great trial, when Mr. Sharp obtained the verdict in favour of Somerset.]



CHAPTER IV.

—Second class of forerunners and coadjutors, up to May 1787, consists of the Quakers in England.—Of George Fox and others.—Of the body of the Quakers assembled at the yearly meeting in 1727; and at various other times.—Quakers, as a body, petition Parliament; and circulate books on the subject.—Individuals among them become labourers and associate in behalf of the Africans; Dilwyn, Harrison, and others.—This the first association ever formed in England for the purpose.

The second class of the forerunners and coadjutors in this great cause, up to May 1787, will consist of the Quakers in England.

The first of this class was George Fox, the venerable founder of this benevolent society.

George Fox was contemporary with Richard Baxter, being born not long after him, and dying much about the same time. Like him, he left his testimony against this wicked trade. When he was in the island of Barbados, in the year 1671, he delivered himself to those who attended his religious meetings in the following manner:—

"Consider with yourselves," says he, "if you were in the same condition as the poor Africans are—who came strangers to you, and were sold to you as slaves—I say, if this should be the condition of you or yours, you would think it a hard measure; yea, and very great bondage and cruelty. And, therefore, consider seriously of this; and do you for them and to them, as you would willingly have them, or any others, do unto you, were you in the like slavish condition, and bring them to know the Lord Christ." And in his Journal, speaking of the advice which he gave his friends at Barbados, he says, "I desired also that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly and gently with their negroes, and not to use cruelty towards them, as the manner of some had been, and that after certain years of servitude they should make them free."

William Edmundson, who was a minister of the society, and, indeed, a fellow-traveller with George Fox, had the boldness in the same island to deliver his sentiments to the governor on the same subject. Having been brought before him and accused of making the Africans Christians, or, in other words, of making them rebel and destroy their owners, he replied, "That it was a good thing to bring them to the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus, and to believe in him who died for them and all men, and that this would keep them from rebelling, or cutting any person's throat; but if they did rebel and cut their throats, as the governor insinuated they would, it would be their own doing, in keeping them in ignorance and under oppression, in giving them liberty to be common with women like brutes, and, on the other hand, in starving them for want of meat and clothes convenient; thus, giving them liberty in that which God restrained, and restraining them in that which was meat and clothing."

I do not find any individual of this society moving in this cause, for some time after the death of George Fox and William Edmundson. The first circumstance of moment which I discover, is a resolution of the whole Society on the subject, at their yearly meeting, held in London in the year 1727. The resolution was contained in the following words:—"It is the sense of this meeting, that the importing of negroes from their native country and relations by Friends is not a commendable nor allowed practice, and is, therefore, censured by this meeting."

In the year 1758, the Quakers thought it their duty, as a body, to pass another resolution upon this subject. At this, time the nature of the trade beginning to be better known, we find them more animated upon it, as the following extract will show:—

"We fervently warn all in profession with us, that they carefully avoid being any way concerned in reaping the unrighteous profits, arising from the iniquitous practice of dealing in negro or other slaves; whereby, in the original purchase, one man selleth another, as he doth the beasts that perish, without any better pretension to a property in him than that of superior force; in direct violation of the Gospel rule, which teacheth all to do as they would be done by, and to do good to all; being the reverse of that covetous disposition, which furnisheth encouragement to those poor ignorant people to perpetuate their savage wars, in order to supply the demands of this most unnatural traffic, by which great numbers of mankind, free by nature, are subject to inextricable bondage, and which hath often been observed to fill their possessors with haughtiness, tyranny, luxury, and barbarity, corrupting the minds and debasing the morals of their children, to the unspeakable prejudice of religion and virtue, and the exclusion of that holy spirit of universal love, meekness, and charity, which is the unchangeable nature and the glory of true Christianity. We, therefore, can do no less, than, with the greatest earnestness, impress it upon Friends everywhere, that they endeavour to keep their hands clear of this unrighteous gain of oppression."

The Quakers hitherto, as appears by the two resolutions which have been quoted, did nothing more than seriously warn all those in religious profession with them against being concerned in this trade. But in three years afterwards, or at the yearly meeting in 1761, they came to a resolution, as we find by the following extract from their minutes, that any of their members haying a concern in it should be disowned:—"This meeting having reason to apprehend that divers under our name, are concerned in the unchristian traffic in negroes, doth recommend it earnestly to the care of Friends everywhere, to discourage, as much as in them lies, a practice so repugnant to our Christian profession; and to deal with all such as shall persevere in a conduct so reproachful to Christianity; and to disown them, if they desist not therefrom."

The yearly meeting of 1761, having thus agreed to exclude from membership such as should be found concerned in this trade, that of 1763 endeavoured to draw the cords, still tighter, by attaching criminality to those who should aid and abet the trade in any manner. By the minute, which was made on this occasion, I apprehend that no one belonging to the Society could furnish even materials for such voyages. "We renew our exhortation, that Friends everywhere be especially careful to keep their hands clear of giving encouragement in any shape to the Slave Trade, it being evidently destructive of the natural rights of mankind, who are all ransomed by one Saviour, and visited by one divine light, in order to salvation; a traffic calculated to enrich and aggrandize some upon the misery of others; in its nature abhorrent to every just and tender sentiment, and contrary to the whole tenour of the Gospel."

Some pleasing intelligence having been sent on this subject, by the Society in America to the Society in England, the yearly meeting of 1772 thought it their duty to notice it, and to keep their former resolutions alive by the following minute:—"It appears that the practice of holding negroes in oppressive and unnatural bondage hath been so successfully discouraged by Friends in some of the colonies, as to be considerably lessened. We cannot but approve of these salutary endeavours, and earnestly intreat that they may be continued, that through the favour of divine Providence a traffic, so unmerciful and unjust in its nature to a part of our own species made, equally with ourselves, for immortality, may come to be considered by all in its proper light, and be utterly abolished as a reproach to the Christian name."

I must beg leave to stop here for a moment, just to pay the Quakers a due tribute of respect for the proper estimation, in which they have uniformly held the miserable outcasts of society, who have been the subject of these minutes. What a contrast does it afford to the sentiments of many others concerning them! How have we been compelled to prove by a long chain of evidence, that they had the same feelings and capacities as ourselves! How many, professing themselves enlightened, even now view them as of a different species! But in the minutes which have been cited we have seen them uniformly represented, as persons "ransomed by one and the same Saviour," "as visited by one and the same light for salvation," and "as made equally for immortality as others." These practical views of mankind, as they are highly honourable to the members of this Society, so they afford a proof both of the reality and of the consistency of their religion.