A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of YorkshireWilberforce, William
History
A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of Yorkshire
Wilberforce, William
Antislavery movements -- Great Britain; Slave trade -- Great Britain
the benefit of any facts to the discredit of the Slave Trade which it
contains. Barrow’s highly interesting account of the Cape of Good Hope,
and his late work, containing the account of the expedition to the
Booshuana country, reflect also much light on the African character, and
indirectly on the effects of the Slave Trade.
[Sidenote: Methods by which Slaves are supplied.]
[Sidenote: Wars.]
Let us now proceed to examine what are the principal sources from which
the Slave market is furnished with its supplies. The result of that
Inquiry will enable us to judge what effect that traffic produces on the
happiness of Africa. A very large proportion of the Slaves consists of
prisoners of war. But here it becomes advisable to rectify some
misconceptions, which have prevailed on this head. The Abolitionists
have been represented as maintaining, that in Africa, wars never arise
from the various causes whence wars have so commonly originated in the
other quarters of the globe; but that they are undertaken solely for the
purpose of obtaining captives, who may be afterwards sold for Slaves. In
contradiction to this position, various African wars have been cited,
which historians state to have arisen from other causes; and it has been
denied that wars furnish any considerable supply to the Slave market.
Can it be necessary to declare, that the advocates for abolition never
made so foolish, as well as so false an assertion, as that which has
been thus imputed to them? Africans are men—The same bad passions
therefore which have produced wars among other communities of human
beings, produce the same wasteful effects in Africa likewise. But it
will greatly elucidate this point to state, that, as we are informed by
Mr. Parke, who has travelled farther into the interior of Africa than
any modern traveller, there are two kinds of war in Africa. The one
bears a resemblance to our European contests, is openly avowed, and
previously declared. “This class however, we are assured, is generally
terminated in a single campaign. A battle is fought; the vanquished
seldom think of rallying; the whole inhabitants become panick struck;
and the conquerors have only to _bind their slaves_,[4] and carry off
their plunder and their victims.” These are taken into the country of
the invader, whence, as opportunities offer, they are sent to the Slave
market.
[Sidenote: Predatory expeditions.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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