Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846Richardson, James
History
Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846
Richardson, James
Sahara -- Description and travel
It is deeply to be deplored that our Anti-Slavery Society confines itself
so much to protests, and what it calls "the moral principle." No people
of the world has done more for the liberties of Africa than the Society
of Friends in England, and no people more admirably exemplify in their
conduct the humane and pacific morals of Christianity. But when the
Founder of our religion resisted his enemies by the remonstrance, "Why
strikest thou me?" something more was meant than a protest. We have had
lately a _triste_ example of the end of protests in a neighbouring
country. The annual protest of the French Chamber of Deputies against
the extinction of the nationality of Poland, not only ended in barren
results, and excited public ridicule, but actually terminated in the
triumph of the nefarious scheme against which it was made. Never was a
country so humiliated as France in this case!--Its Chief, the Sovereign
of its choice, consenting at the time, to the damning act of the
extinction of Polish nationality, for the sake of accomplishing a low and
scandalous family intrigue in Spain! This was something more than
ridiculous, and is one of the many infamies of our age, perpetrated on so
large a scale. Now, I do not assert, that the protests of the
Anti-Slavery Society will end in the re-enactment of the Slave-Trade by
the British Parliament. But the last and present Sessions of Imperial
Parliament, show symptoms of our country abandoning Africa, after the
labours of half a century, to all the horrors of the Slave-Trade. Mr. P.
Borthwick and Mr. Hume, more especially the latter, pleaded, in
conjunction with others, during last Session, for the withdrawal of the
British cruisers from off the Western Coast of Africa, and free trade in
emigration, if not in slaves. In this good work, of course, they have the
sympathies of the Anti-Slavery Free Trading League. Some of our journals
opine, in their late articles, that a change has come over the spirit of
our abolition dream, and suggest that the clerk, in charge of the
Anti-Slavery Papers at the Foreign Office, is an old antiquated,
superannuated being. In a word, these journals and Mr. Hume's pro-slavery
clique, see no reason why Great Britain should not exhibit to this and
succeeding ages, the most dreadful bad faith in the case of British
abolition. They would have us say to the world:--"All our Anti-Slavery
efforts, our Parliamentary enactments against Slavery, our huge blue
books of published Anti-Slavery papers, our protocols and treaties with
Foreign Powers, all, each, and singular, are one grand organized system
of selfishness and hypocrisy." I know very well that, in general,
foreigners give us no credit whatever for our anti-slavery feelings and
public acts for the suppression of the Slave-Trade. This they have
reiterated in my ears. And, how can they give us credit for sincerity in
abolition, when our public men and public writers call for something like
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