The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839)Clarkson, Thomas
History
The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839)
Clarkson, Thomas
Slave trade -- Africa
I might mention Bishop Saunderson and others, who bore a testimony
equally strong against the lawfulness of trading in the persons of men,
and of holding them in bondage; but as I mean to confine myself to those
who have favoured the cause of the Africans specifically, I cannot admit
their names into any of the classes which have been announced.
Of those, who compose the first class, defined as it has now been, I
cannot name any individual who took a part in this cause till between
the years 1670 and 1680; for in the year 1640, and for a few years
afterwards, the nature of the trade and of the slavery was but little
known, except to a few individuals, who were concerned in them; and it
is obvious that these would neither endanger their own interest nor
proclaim their own guilt by exposing it. The first, whom I shall mention
is Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the established church. This pious
divine wrote a treatise upon the subject, which he dedicated to the then
archbishop of Canterbury. He gave it to the world, at the time
mentioned, under the title of "_The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate._" In
this treatise he lays open the situation of these oppressed people, of
whose sufferings he had been an eye-witness in the island of Barbados.
He calls forth the pity of the reader in an affecting manner, and
exposes with a nervous eloquence the brutal sentiments and conduct of
their oppressors. This seems to have been the first work undertaken in
England expressly in favour of the cause.
The next person, whom I shall mention, is Richard Baxter, the celebrated
divine among the nonconformists. In his _Christian Directory_, published
about the same time as _The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate_, he gives
advice to those masters in foreign plantations, who have negroes and
other slaves. In this he protests loudly against this trade. He says
expressly that they, who go out as pirates, and take away poor Africans,
or people of another land, who never forfeited life or liberty, and make
them slaves and sell them, are the worst of robbers, and ought to be
considered as the common enemies of mankind; and that they who buy them,
and use them as mere beasts for their own convenience, regardless of
their spiritual welfare, are fitter to be called demons than christians.
He then proposes several queries, which he answers in a clear and
forcible manner, showing the great inconsistency of this traffic, and
the necessity of treating those then in bondage with tenderness and a
due regard to their spiritual concerns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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