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
If I were asked, "What can be done for Africa?" I should reply with no
new thing, no nostrums of my own concocting, but what has been reiterated
again and again. Teach her children to till the soil--to cultivate
available exports by which they may obtain in exchange, through the
medium of a legitimate commerce, the European products and manufactures
necessary for their use and enjoyment. Until this be done, nothing
effectual will be done. In vain you send missionaries of religion, or
agents of abolition; in vain you contract treaties with the Princes of
Africa. It is humiliating to think, equally a disgrace to our religion as
to our civilization, that our connexion with Africa has only served to
plunge her into deeper misery and profounder degradation. With truth we
here may apply the strong censure of a Chinese Emperor, "That the march
of Christians is whitened with human bones." Wherever we have touched her
western shores there our footsteps have been marked with blood and
devastation. We have fostered and encouraged within the heart of Africa
the most odious and unnatural passions. We have stimulated the prince to
sell his subjects, the father to sell his child, the brother to sell the
sister, the husband the wife, into thrice-accursed and again accursed
slavery! We have done all and more than this, whilst we have convulsed
every state and kingdom of Africa with war, for the supply of cargoes of
human beings. And for what? To cultivate our miserable cotton and sugar
plantations! These are the doctrines of mercy and charity which we have
taught the poor untutored children of Africa. Happy for poor forlorn,
dusky, naked Africa, had she never seen the pale visage or met the
Satanic brow of the European Christian! Does any man in his senses, who
believes in God and Providence, think that the wrongs of Africa will go
on for ever unavenged? Already, has not Providence avenged the wrongs of
Africa upon Spain and Portugal, by reducing their national character and
consideration to the lowest in the European family of nations? And as to
the United States of America, has not the boasted liberty of our
Republican countrymen, who colonized America, become a by-word, a
hissing, and a scorn, amongst the nations of the earth? Have not these
slave-holding Americans committed acts, nationally, within the last few
years, which the most absolute Governments of Europe would blush to be
guilty of? And what is one of their last acts, on a smaller scale, but
not less decisively indicative of their national morality? The New York
Bible Society has declared that it will not give the Bible to slaves,
even when they are able to read the Bible! Would the Czar of Russia
permit such an impious rule as this to be made by his nobles for their
slaves or serfs? Such an action would render the liberties of a thousand
republics a mockery, a snare, and a delusion, and their names infamous
throughout the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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