A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of Yorkshire — John Shaqi
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
But besides these general and powerfully operating causes of evil, which
have been already noticed, there is one circumstance in the manner of
conducting the trade on the coast, which so naturally tends to the
production of frequent acts of violence, as to deserve a distinct
specification. It affords another striking instance of the way in which
the Slave Trade has in a long course of years gradually imparted a taint
to all the institutions and customs of Africa. It is the general custom
for Captains of Slave ships, in exchange for the goods which they
advance on credit, and of which the value, as has been stated, is to be
repaid to them in Slaves, to receive the children or some other near
relations of the Black Factor as pledges, or as they are termed in
Africa _pawns_, whom the Slave captains are to return when the
stipulated number of Slaves has been delivered. With the goods which
have been entrusted to him he commonly goes up the country; and, knowing
that by some means or other the requisite number of Slaves must be
furnished, or that his own nearest relatives, and he himself too if he
can be taken, will be carried off into slavery, it is obvious, that when
the day for the sailing of the ship draws nigh, he will not be very
scrupulous in the means to which he resorts for completing his
assortment. Thus even parental instinct and the domestic and social
affections are rendered by the Slave Trade the incentives to acts of
cruelty and rapine. But it would be endless were I to attempt to lay
before you in detail all the various forms and modes of wickedness, and
misery, of which, directly and indirectly, the Slave Trade is
productive. It’s general and leading features have been now exhibited to
you.
[Sidenote: Recapitulation of effects of Slave Trade.]
Such are the methods by which from eighty to one hundred thousand of our
fellow creatures, a race of people too, declared by Mr. Parke himself,
to be perhaps beyond all others, passionately attached to their native
soil, are annually torn from their country, their homes, their friends,
and from whatever is most dear to them. All the ties of nature, and
habit, and feeling, are burst asunder; and, by a long voyage, the
horrors of which were acknowledged to constitute of themselves an almost
incalculable sum of misery, these victims of our injustice are carried
to a distant land, to wear away the whole remainder of their lives in a
state of hopeless slavery and degradation, with the same melancholy
prospect for their descendants after them, for ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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