Hence arose that horrid and inhuman practice of dragging Africans into slavery; which has since been so pursued, in defiance of every principle of justice and religion: Though Hawkins was the first Englishman who engaged in this traffic, so repugnant to the spirit of the English constitution; though he made use of such fraudulent arts even in his first method of conducting it, as few men can have the assurance to vindicate; yet, as he was a man of prudence and humanity, he is no ways chargeable with those diabolical abuses which have since crept into this trade. Had men continued to conduct it according to his plan and proposal, and hands been transported by their voluntary consent to labour in burning climates, where Europeans are disqualified by nature for the task; had the Spaniards allowed them the common privileges of servants, after they had cleared the charges they cost them; had negroes been bought from the flames, to which in some countries they were devoted on their falling prisoners of war, and in others sacrificed at the funeral obsequies of the great and powerful among themselves; in short, had they been by this traffic delivered from torture or death, European merchants might have some excuse to plead in its vindication. But, according to the common mode in which it has been conducted, we must confess it a difficult matter to conceive a single argument in its defence. It is contrary to all laws of nature and nations to entice, inveigle and compel such multitudes of human creatures, who never injured us, from their native land, and dispose of them like flocks of sheep and cattle to the highest bidder; and, what compleats the cruelty and injustice of the traffic, to consign them over to ignorance, barbarism, and perpetual slavery. After this, where will insatiable avarice stop? As a free and independent people, they had unquestionably an equal right to make slaves of the inhabitants of Europe. Nature has given the people of the one continent no superiority over those of the other; the advantages of Europeans were the effects only of art and improvement. And though policy has given countenance and sanction to the trade, yet every candid and impartial man must confess, that it is atrocious and unjustifiable in every light in which it can be viewed, and turns merchants into a band of robbers, and trade into atrocious acts of fraud and violence. [Sidenote] A.D. 1584. Virginia settled.