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
He wrote also a letter to the Countess of Huntingdon on the following
subject.--She had founded a college, at the recommendation of George
Whitfield, called the Orphan-house, near Savannah, in Georgia, and had
endowed it. The object of this institution was, to furnish scholastic
instruction to the poor, and to prepare some of them for the ministry.
George Whitfield, ever attentive to the cause of the poor Africans, thought
that this institution might have been useful to them also; but soon after
his death, they who succeeded him bought slaves, and these in unusual
numbers, to extend the rice and indigo plantations belonging to the
college. The letter then in question was written by Anthony Benezet, in
order to lay before the Countess, as a religious woman, the misery she was
occasioning in Africa, by allowing the managers of her college in Georgia
to give encouragement to the Slave-trade. The Countess replied, that such a
measure should never have her countenance, and that she would take care to
prevent it.
On discovering that the Abbé Raynal had brought out his celebrated work, in
which he manifested a tender feeling in behalf of the injured Africans, he
entered into a correspondence with him, hoping to make him yet more useful
to their cause.
Finding, also, in the year 1783, that the Slave-trade, which had greatly
declined during the American war, was reviving, he addressed a pathetic
letter to our Queen, (as I mentioned in the last chapter,) who, on hearing
the high character of the writer of it from Benjamin West, received it with
marks of peculiar condescension and attention. The following is a copy of
it.
"_To_ CHARLOTTE _Queen of Great Britain_.
"IMPRESSED with a sense of religious duty, and encouraged by the
opinion generally entertained of thy benevolent disposition to
succour the distressed, I take the liberty, very respectfully, to
offer to thy perusal some tracts, which, I believe, faithfully
describe the suffering condition of many hundred thousands of our
fellow-creatures of the African race, great numbers of whom, rent
from every tender connection in life, are annually taken from their
native land, to endure, in the American islands and plantations, a
most rigorous and cruel slavery; whereby many, very many of them,
are brought to a melancholy and untimely end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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