The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume IIClarkson, Thomas
History
The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume II
Clarkson, Thomas
Slave trade -- Africa
He well knew that the advocates for the Slave-trade had endeavoured to
represent the project for abolition as a branch of jacobinism; but they,
who supported it, proceeded upon no visionary motives of equality or of the
imprescriptible rights of man. They strenuously upheld the gradations of
civil society: but they did indeed affirm that these gradations were, both
ways, both as they ascended and as they descended, limited. There was an
existence of power, to which no good king would aspire; and there was an
extreme condition of subjection, to which man could not be degraded without
injustice; and this they would maintain was the condition of the African,
who was torn away into slavery.
He then explained the limits of that portion of Africa, which the bill
intended to set apart as sacred to peace and liberty. He showed that this
was but one-third of the coast; and therefore that two-thirds were yet left
for the diabolical speculations of the slave-merchants. He expressed his
surprise that such witnesses as those against the bill should have been
introduced at all. He affirmed that their oaths were falsified by their own
log-books; and that from their own accounts the very healthiest of their
vessels were little better than pestilential gaols. Mr. Robert Hume, one of
these witnesses, had made a certain voyage. He had made it in thirty-three
days. He had shipped two hundred and sixty-five slaves, and he had lost
twenty-three of them. If he had gone on losing his slaves, all of whom were
under twenty-five years of age, at this rate, it was obvious, that he would
have lost two hundred and fifty-three of them, if his passage had lasted
for a year. Now in London only seventeen would have died, of that age, out
of one thousand within the latter period.
After having exposed the other voyages of Mr. Hume in a similar manner, he
entered into a commendation of the views of the Sierra Leone company; and
then defended the character of the Africans in their own country, as
exhibited in the Travels of Mr. Mungo Park. He made a judicious
discrimination with respect to slavery, as it existed among them. He showed
that this slavery was analogous to that of the heroic and patriarchal ages;
and contrasted it with the West Indian in an able manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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