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
A case in point.--It cost the Aborigines of Britain little or nothing
in clothing, &c. The difference between their forefathers and the
present generation, in point of consumption, is literally infinite.
The supposition is most obvious. It will be equally immense in
Africa--The same cause, viz. civilization, will ever have the same
effect.
It is trading upon safe grounds. A commercial intercourse with Africa
opens an inexhaustible source of wealth to the manufacturing interests
of Great Britain, and to all which the slave trade is an objection.
If I am not misinformed, the manufacturing interest is equal, if not
superior, to the landed interest, as to the value, for reasons which
will soon appear. The abolition of slavery, so diabolical, will give a
most rapid extension of manufactures, which is totally and
diametrically opposite to what some interested people assert.
The manufacturers of this country must and will, in the nature and
reason of things, have a full and constant employ by supplying the
African markets.
Population, the bowels and surface of Africa, abound in valuable and
useful returns; the hidden treasures of centuries will be brought to
light and into circulation. Industry, enterprize, and mining, will
have their full scope, proportionably as they civilize. In a word, it
lays open an endless field of commerce to the British manufactures and
merchant adventurer. The manufacturing interest and the general
interests are synonymous. The abolition of slavery would be in reality
an universal good.
Tortures, murder, and every other imaginable barbarity and iniquity,
are practised upon the poor slaves with impunity. I hope the slave
trade will be abolished. I pray it may be an event at hand. The great
body of manufacturers, uniting in the cause, will considerably
facilitate and expedite it; and, as I have already stated, it is most
substantially their interest and advantage, and as such the nation's
at large, (except those persons concerned in the manufacturing
neck-yokes, collars, chains, hand-cuffs, leg-bolts, drags,
thumb-screws, iron muzzles, and coffins; cats, scourges, and other
instruments of torture used in the slave trade). In a short time one
sentiment alone will prevail, from motives of interest as well as
justice and humanity. Europe contains one hundred and twenty millions
of inhabitants. Query--How many millions doth Africa contain?
Supposing the Africans, collectively and individually, to expend 5l. a
head in raiment and furniture yearly when civilized, &c. an immensity
beyond the reach of imagination!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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