The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) — John Shaqi
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
chasing ship may be detained by endeavours to pick them up; the dying
and the dead strew the deck; women giving birth to the fruit of the
womb, amidst the corpses of their husbands and their children; and
other, yet worse and nameless atrocities, fill up the terrible picture,
of impotent justice and triumphant guilt. But the guilt is not all
Spanish and Portuguese. The English Government can enforce its demands
on the puny cabinets of Madrid and Lisbon, scarce conscious of a
substantive existence, in all that concerns our petty interests:
wherever justice and mercy to mankind demand our interference, there our
voice sinks within us, and no sound is uttered. That any treaty without
an outfit clause should be suffered to exist between powers so situated,
is an outrage upon all justice, all reason, all common sense. But one
thing is certain, that unless we are to go further, we have gone too
far, and must in mercy to hapless Africa retrace our steps. Unless we
really put the traffic down with a strong hand, and instantly, we must
instantly repeal the treaties that pretended to abolish it, for these
exacerbate the evil a hundred fold, and are ineffectual to any one
purpose but putting money into the pockets of our men of war. The fact
is as unquestionable, as it is appalling, that all our anxious
endeavours to extinguish the Foreign Slave Trade, have ended in making
it incomparably worse than it was before we pretended to put it down;
that owing to our efforts, there are thrice the number of slaves yearly
torn from Africa; and that wholly because of our efforts, two thirds of
these are murdered on the high seas and in the holds of the pirate
vessels.
It is said, that when these scenes were described to an indignant nation
last session of Parliament, the actual effects of this bad system were
denied, though its tendency could not be disputed.
It was averred that "no British seaman could be capable of neglecting
his duty for the sake of increasing the gains of the station." But
nothing could be more absurd than this. Can the direct and inevitable
tendency of the head-money system be doubted? Are cruisers the only men
over whom motives have no influence? Then why offer a reward at all?
When they want no stimulus to perform their duty, why tell them that if
the ship is empty, they get a hundred pounds: if laden, five thousand?
They know the rules of arithmetic;--they understand the force of
numbers. But, in truth, there is not an individual on all the coast of
Africa who will be misled by such appeals, or suffer all this to divert
them from their purpose of denouncing the system. There are persons high
in rank among the best servants of the crown, who know the facts from
their own observations, and who are ready to bear witness to the truth,
in spite of all the attempts that have been made to silence them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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