Such precisely has been the course of things in Africa. For two centuries it had been deemed desirable to have from that country the same "inexhaustible supply of cheap labour" that Ireland has supplied to England; and, therefore, no effort was spared to prevent the negroes from making any improvement in their modes of cultivation. "It was," says Macpherson, "the European policy" to prevent the Africans from arriving at perfection in any of their pursuits, "from a fear of interfering with established branches of trade elsewhere." More properly, it was the English policy. "The truth is," said Mr. Pitt, in 1791-- "There is no nation in Europe which has plunged so deeply into this guilt as Britain. _We_ stopped the natural progress of civilization in Africa. _We_ cut her off from the opportunity of improvement. _We_ kept her down in a state of darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversion of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe. False to the very principles of trade, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done to that continent! We had obtained as yet only so much knowledge of its productions as to show that there was a capacity for trade which we checked." How was all this done? By preventing the poor Africans from obtaining machinery to enable them to prepare their sugar for market, or for producing cotton and indigo and combining them into cloth--precisely the same course of operation that was pursued in Jamaica with such extraordinary loss of life. Guns and gunpowder aided in providing cheap labour, and how they were supplied, even so recently as in 1807, will be seen on a perusal of the following passage, from an eminent English authority, almost of our own day:-- "A regular branch of trade here, at Birmingham, is the manufacture of guns for the African market. They are made for about a dollar and a half: the barrel is filled with water, and if the water does not come through, it is thought proof sufficient. Of course, they burst when fired, and mangle the wretched negro, who has purchased them upon the credit of English faith, and received them, most probably, as the price of human flesh! No secret is made of this abominable trade, yet the government never interferes, and the persons concerned in it are not marked and shunned as infamous."--_Southey's "Espriella's Letters"_.