The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume IClarkson, Thomas
History
The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I
Clarkson, Thomas
Slave trade -- Africa
Mr. Beaufoy entered minutely into an examination of the information, which
had been, given by the witnesses, and which afforded unanswerable arguments
for the passing of the bill. He showed the narrow space, which they
themselves had been made to allow for the package of a human body, and the
ingenious measures they were obliged to resort to for stowing this living
cargo within the limits of the ship. He adverted next to the case of Mr.
Dalzell; and showed how one dismal fact after another, each making against
their own testimony, was extorted from him. He then went to the trifling
mortality said to be experienced in these voyages, upon which subject he
spoke in the following words: "Though the witnesses are some of them
interested in the trade, and all of them parties against the bill, their
confession is, that of the Negros of the windward coast, who are men of the
strongest constitution which Africa affords, no less on an average than
five in each hundred perish in the voyage,--a voyage, it must be
remembered, but of six weeks. In a twelvemonth, then, what must be the
proportion of the dead? No less than forty-three in a hundred, which is
seventeen times the usual rate of mortality; for all the estimates of life
suppose no more than a fortieth of the people, or two and a half in the
hundred, to die within the space of a year. Such then is the comparison. In
the ordinary course of nature the number of persons, (including those in
age and infancy, the weakest periods of existence,) who perish in the space
of a twelvemonth, is at the rate of but two and a half in a hundred; but in
an African voyage, notwithstanding the old are excluded and few infants
admitted, so that those who are shipped are in the firmest period of life,
the list of deaths presents an annual mortality of forty-three in a
hundred. It presents this mortality even in vessels from the windward coast
of Africa; but in those which sail to Bonny, Benin, and the Calebars, from
whence the greatest proportion of the slaves are brought, this mortality is
increased by a variety of causes, (of which the greater length of the
voyage is one,) and is said to be twice as large, which supposes that in
every hundred the deaths annually amount to no less than eighty-six. Yet
even the former comparatively low mortality, of which the counsel speaks
with so much satisfaction, as a proof of the kind and compassionate
treatment of the slaves, even this indolent and lethargic destruction gives
to the march of death seventeen times its usual speed. It is a destruction,
which, if general but for ten years, would depopulate the world, blast the
purposes of its creation, and extinguish the human race."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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