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African slaves, the inhumanity of the commerce was disregarded; the prayers of the colonies were repulsed; and her government and people united to entail upon us for ever a servile population. No sooner, however, is the commerce checked by the oppressed colonies, than, in a sudden burst of piety, she is agonized at the existence of slavery; shocked at our turpitude in holding in bondage those whom she has forced upon us in such numbers, that to free them would involve both them and us in common ruin; and, by a policy the most insidious, she endeavours, of course from motives of the purest philanthropy, to excite the slaves to insurrection and murder! Such was her policy during the revolution, such was her policy in the late war-such is her policy now.

CHAPTER VI.

English Slave Trade-Extent-Cruelty-Motives of Abolition-Violation of the Law Abolishing the Trade.

Or the various nations who have stained their escutcheon with the blood of Africa, who have torn her children from their homes, and sold them into slavery-England is the most profoundly guilty. "The truth is," said Mr. Pitt, in the English parliament, "there is no nation in Europe which has plunged so deeply into this guilt as Britain.

We

stopped the natural progress of civilization in Africa. We cut her off from the opportunity of improvement. We kept her down in a state of darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every national barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus has the perversion of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe." The humiliating confession was true. In the extent and atrocity of her human traffic, England had no rival.

England may be considered as having been the slave merchant of the world. She engrossed twothirds of the trade. She trafficked in flesh and blood with every country, and became the unfeeling factor of the slave dealers in all sections of the world. England furnished the French colonies with ne

groes, and stocked the Spanish dominions by contract. It is stated on good authority, that England conveyed from Africa to America annually, more than one hundred thousand slaves. Anderson's History of Trade and Commerce, says, "England supplies her American colonies with negro slaves, amounting in number to above one hundred thousand every year." Wilberforce, in parliament, reminded his countrymen, that they enjoyed the largest share of the guilty profits of the slave trade. Mr. Walsh thus sums up the extent and consequences of the English commerce in slaves. "If we state it (the annual import of slaves) in round numbers, at thirty thousand, we shall have, for the one hundred and six years, three millions one hundred and eighteen thousand negroes, imported into the British possessions alone. But to have the whole number which Great Britain obtained from Africa, we must bring into the account those whom she procured antecedent to the year 1680, and after the year 1786, those whom she imported directly into the foreign possessions under her contracts, and otherwise; and also those who perished on her hands on the coast of Africa, and in the transportation. The aggregate of her immediate prey must have exceeded six millions; and we may rate the direct mortality, for which she is answerable, at two millions, for the century of the trade, preceding the abolition." Such is the extent of the slave trade as prosecuted by England,that England which reviles America, because two millions of slaves thus entailed upon her, live in comfort and content within her borders.

The cruelties perpetrated in such a traffic may be easier conceived than painted. But it may be remarked, that England was, in this also, equally preeminent. It was England that fomented the wars among the native tribes to procure slaves. It was England that numbered, among her chief exports to

Africa, spirits, rum, and brandy, guns, cutlasses, and ammunition. It was England that carried on the heartless commerce, with such merciless disregard of human life, that "sometimes a third or more perished on the passage."

The parliamentary report of 1789, on the slave trade, states, that of the slaves introduced into Jamaica, from 1655 to 1787, thirty-one thousand one hundred and eighty-one died in the harbour from the noxious quality of the drugs employed in making them up for sale.

A work on English commerce, entitled "Liverpool Memorandum," states, "that it may be presumed, that at a moderate computation of slaves, who are purchased by our African merchants in a year, near thirty thousand die upon the voyage and in the seasoning."

Mr. Wilberforce denounced the English slavetrade as "a scene of uniform, unadulterated, unsophisticated wickedness." Mr. Beaufoy, in the same debate said, "superstition herself is less obdurate, less persevering, less steadfast in her cruelty than this cool, reflecting, deliberate, remorseless commerce." Mr. Pitt said, he had no doubt that British arms were placed in the hands of the Africans to promote universal war and desolation. Mr. Fox observed, that "the acts of barbarity proved upon the slave captains in the course of the voyages, were so extraordinary, that they had been attributed to insanity." One case was narrated in which the сарtain of a British ship, in 1781, threw into the sea one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive, in order to defraud the underwriters. Another case was mentioned by Wilberforce, in which six English vessels anchored off an African town-agreed to fire on the town, to force the inhabitants to sell their slaves at a lower price. The cruelties of the pas

sage appear to have combined the greatest amount of horrors. Mr. Walsh, in referring to the mortality induced by this and other causes, says, "it may be asserted with confidence, that the British trade caused immediately, during the two centuries of its legal prosecution, the destruction of more negroes than have existed, altogether, in North America since the first settlement!"'*

As the awful atrocities committed by England in the prosecution of the slave trade are not, and cannot be denied nor palliated, the merit of its abolition is dwelt on with great triumph, as sufficient to efface the remembrance of all her former offences. It may be doubted, whether a nation is entitled to any peculiar credit or commendation for abstaining, after uninterrupted centuries of crime, from acts of open rapine. Still less is praise merited, if the reform tardily follows twenty years after a full conviction and appreciation of the guilt of the course pursued. But every lingering claim on our gratitude and respect is effaced, if it be discovered, that the act of justice was induced, not even by a cold and reluctant sense of duty, but by motives wholly sordid and interested.

In the year 1787, a few individuals, whose humanity has rendered their names illustrious, brought the subject of the slave trade before the English parliament. The facts in relation to the traffic were collected with incredible labour, and placed, in the strongest light, before the house. The cause was fortunate in obtaining the advocacy of several of the noblest spirits of the times; and was urged with all the force of reason and eloquence. Session after session the contest was renewed; but years came and passed, and the trade not only continued but

* It is estimated that more than twenty millions of Africans have been transported to America.