Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845Various
Philosophy
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Another subject of difference, and a far more serious one than these petty
ranklings of offended pride and ill-borne obligation, is the slave-trade,
and the right of search. Persuade Spaniards, or Frenchmen, or any nation
in the world, if you can, that Great Britain added twenty millions to her
debt, impoverished her own colonial proprietors, and still goes to a heavy
annual expense for the suppression of the slave traffic, with any other
view than a very decided one to her own benefit. To Spain, thanks to the
wretched administration of her internal resources, the revenue derived
from her few remaining colonies is a great object; and in our hostility to
the slave-trade, she beholds a direct attack on that source of income.
Again, in the present depressed state of Spanish commerce, a large portion
of the commercial capital of the country is invested in the slave-trade;
and a constant bitter feeling towards the English is consequently kept up
amongst the class whose money is thus employed. If they bring one cargo
out of three to the Havannah, they have, it is said, a profit on the
transaction; but at the same time it is not likely to put the
slave-dealing Dons in particularly good humour to hear of the other two
having been walked off by British cruisers. On the contrary, they curse
the meddling Ingleses, who having, they say, cut off their own tail by
emancipating their negroes, now, like the fox in the fable, wish to
persuade, or, if necessary, to compel all their neighbours to follow their
example.
The English resident is enthusiastic on the subject of slave emancipation,
and gives us a lively account of some arguments he maintained on the
subject with sundry Gaditano slave-dealers, the result of which was, of
course, that each party remained precisely of the same opinion as before.
The abstract philanthropy of English legislation on that question cannot
be doubted; and it is to be hoped that the course adopted may eventually
prove beneficial to humanity, although it seems very doubtful whether such
has as yet been the case. Meanwhile, there is small credit given to us for
disinterestedness by foreigners, who, in our resolute opposition to the
slave-traffic, are determined to see nothing but a wish to harass their
commerce, injure their colonies, and insure our dominion of the seas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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