The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written By HimselfEquiano, Olaudah
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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written By Himself
Equiano, Olaudah
Enslaved persons -- Great Britain -- Biography; Enslaved persons -- United States -- Biography; Equiano, Olaudah, 1745-1797
Your Majesty's well known benevolence and humanity emboldens
me to approach your royal presence, trusting that the
obscurity of my situation will not prevent your Majesty from
attending to the sufferings for which I plead.
Yet I do not solicit your royal pity for my own distress; my
sufferings, although numerous, are in a measure forgotten. I
supplicate your Majesty's compassion for millions of my
African countrymen, who groan under the lash of tyranny in
the West Indies.
The oppression and cruelty exercised to the unhappy negroes
there, have at length reached the British legislature, and
they are now deliberating on its redress; even several
persons of property in slaves in the West Indies, have
petitioned parliament against its continuance, sensible that
it is as impolitic as it is unjust--and what is inhuman must
ever be unwise.
Your Majesty's reign has been hitherto distinguished by
private acts of benevolence and bounty; surely the more
extended the misery is, the greater claim it has to your
Majesty's compassion, and the greater must be your Majesty's
pleasure in administering to its relief.
I presume, therefore, gracious Queen, to implore your
interposition with your royal consort, in favour of the
wretched Africans; that, by your Majesty's benevolent
influence, a period may now be put to their misery; and that
they may be raised from the condition of brutes, to which
they are at present degraded, to the rights and situation of
freemen, and admitted to partake of the blessings of your
Majesty's happy government; so shall your Majesty enjoy the
heartfelt pleasure of procuring happiness to millions, and
be rewarded in the grateful prayers of themselves, and of
their posterity.
And may the all-bountiful Creator shower on your Majesty,
and the Royal Family, every blessing that this world can
afford, and every fulness of joy which divine revelation has
promised us in the next.
I am your Majesty's most dutiful and devoted servant to
command,
Gustavus Vassa,
The Oppressed Ethiopean.
No. 53, Baldwin's Gardens.
* * * * *
The negro consolidated act, made by the assembly of Jamaica last year,
and the new act of amendment now in agitation there, contain a proof
of the existence of those charges that have been made against the
planters relative to the treatment of their slaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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