# The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade/Chapter 14

Contents
CHAPTER XIV.
Parliamentary History. — The Twenty Years' Struggle.
Mr. Wilberforce had been preparing to introduce the subject into the House of Commons when he was taken so ill that his life was despaired of. Under these circumstances, his friend Mr. Pitt, then chancellor of the exche​quer and prime minister, undertook to supply his place. On the 9th of May, 1788, he opened the business in the house.
Mr. Pitt arose: He said he intended to move a resolution relative to a subject which was of more importance than any which had ever been agitated in that house. This honor he should not have had, but for a circumstance which he could not but deeply regret, the severe indisposition of his friend Mr. Wilberforce, in whose hands every measure which belonged to justice, humanity, and the national interest, was peculiarly well placed. The subject in question was no less than that of the slave-trade. It was obvious from the great number of petitions which had been presented concerning it, how much it had engaged the public attention, and consequently how much it deserved the serious notice of that house, and how much it became their duty to take some measure concerning it. But whatever was done on such a subject, every one would agree, ought to be done with the maturest deliberation. Two opinions had prevailed without doors, as appeared from the language of the different petitions. It had been pretty generally thought that the African slave-trade ought to be abolished. There were others, however, who thought it only stood in need of regulations. But all had agreed that it ought not to remain as it stood at present. But that measure which it might be the most proper to take, could only be discovered by a cool, patient, and diligent examination of the subject in all its circumstances, relations, and consequences. This had induced him to form an opinion that the present was not the proper time for discussing it; for the session was now far advanced, and there was also a want of proper materials for the full information of the house. It would, he thought, be better discussed, when it might produce some useful debate, and when that inquiry which had been instituted by his majesty's ministers, (he meant the examination by a committee of privy council,) should be brought to such a state of maturity as to make it fit that the result of it should be laid before the house. That inquiry, he trusted, would facilitate their investigation, and enable them the better to proceed to a decision, which should be equally founded on principles of humanity, justice, and sound policy. As there was not a probability of reaching so desirable an end in the present state of business, he meant to move a resolution to pledge the house to the discussion of the question early in the next session. If by that time his honorable friend should be recovered, which he hoped would be the case, then he (Mr Wilberforce) would take the lead in it; but should it unfortunately happen otherwise, then he (the chancellor of the exchequer) pledged himself to bring forward some proposition concerning it. The house, however, would observe that he had studiously avoided giving any opinion of his own on this great subject. He thought it wiser to defer this till the time of the discussion should arrive. He concluded with moving, after having read the names of the places from whence the different petitions had come, "That this house will, early in the next session of parliament, proceed to take into consideration the circumstances of the slave-trade complained of in the said petitions, and what may be fit to be done thereupon."
The motion of Mr. Pitt was warmly discussed, and at considerable length ​The principal speakers upon it were Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, Sir William Dolben, Lord Penrhyn, and Mr. Gascoyn. The two last were members from Liverpool, and were strongly opposed to meddling with the question of the abolition of the slave-trade at any time.
Mr. Fox wished that there might be no delay; he said he was sorry the consideration of the question, but more particularly where so much human suffering was concerned, should be put off to another session, when it was obvious that no advantage could be gained by delay.
At length, when the question was put, the resolution was agreed to unanimously. Thus ended the first discussion that ever took place in the commons on this important subject. This debate, though many of the persons concerned in it abstained cautiously from entering into the merits of the general question, became interesting in consequence of circumstances attending it. Several rose up at once to give relief, as it were, to their feelings by utterance; but by so doing, they were prevented, many of them, from being heard. They who were heard, spoke with peculiar energy, as if warmed in an extraordinary manner by the subject. There was an apparent enthusiasm in behalf of the injured Africans. It was supposed by some that there was a moment in which, if the chancellor of the exchequer had moved for an immediate abolition of the trade, he would have carried it that night.
About this time, Mr. Clarkson brought out his powerful essay on the impolicy of the slave-trade, which was circulated in great numbers by the committee. Their efforts had aroused the feelings of the whole English nation, and had attracted the notice of many distinguished persons throughout Europe and America. As soon as the session was over, Mr. Clarkson again undertook a journey, visiting all the seaports between Kent and Cornwall. His object was to find out new witnesses to strengthen the cause, and form auxiliary committees. The committee, meantime, were indefatigable; they had addressed the rulers of Spain, Portugal, and Sweden; they had circulated five new works, besides the engraving which we have copied of the interior of a slave ship, exhibiting the closely packed bodies of the negroes.
On the 19th of March, 1789, Mr. Wilberforce moved in the House of Commons that the house should, on the 29th of April, take into consideration its resolution of the last session. The motion was agreed to, but it was the signal for all those who supposed themselves interested in the continuance of the trade, such as merchants, planters, manufacturers, mortgagees, and others, to begin a tremendous opposition. Meetings were called, and frightful resolutions passed. The public papers were filled with them; and pamphlets issued, filled with the most bitter invectives against all engaged in the movement. Emancipation was industriously confounded with the abolition of the trade. Compensation was demanded in a monstrous degree. The cry was such that many began to be staggered about the propriety of the total abolition of the trade. Calculations exhibited that the number of slaves in the British West Indies amounted to 410,000, and that to keep up that number the annual importation of 10,000 was required; that the English procured in Africa 30,000 ​annually, and therefore could sell 20,000 to other nations; that in the prosecution of this trade, English manufactures to the amount of above £800,000 sterling were exported, and above £1,400,000 in value obtained in return, and that the government received £256,000 annually by the slave tax.
The report of the privy council, consisting of the examinations before mentioned, was laid before the house, and that all might have a chance to examine it, Mr. Fitt moved that the consideration of the subject be postponed from the 29th of April to the 12th of May.
At length the 12th of May arrived. Mr. Wilberforce rose up in the commons, and moved the order of the day for the house to resolve itself Into a committee of the whole house, to take into consideration the petitions which had been presented against the slave-trade.
This order having been read, he moved that the report of the committee of privy council; that the acts passed in the islands relative to slaves; that the evidence adduced last year on the slave-trade; that the petitions offered in the last session against the. slave-trade; and that the accounts presented to the house, in the last and present session, relative to the exports and imports to Africa, be referred to the same committee.
These motions having been severally agreed to, the house immediately resolved itself into a committee of the whole house, and Sir William Dolben was put into the chair.
Mr. Wilberforce began by declaring that when he considered how much discussion the subject, which he was about to explain to the committee, had occasioned not only in that house but throughout the kingdom, and throughout Europe; and when he considered the extent and importance of it, the variety of interests involved in it, and the consequences which might arise, he owned he had been filled with apprehensions, lest a subject of such magnitude and a cause of such weight should suffer from the weakness of its advocate but when he recollected that in the progress of his inquiries he had every where been received with candor, that most people gave him credit for the purity of his motives, and that, however many of these might then differ from him, they were all likely to agree in the end, he had dismissed his fears and marched forward with a firmer step in this cause of humanity, justice and religion. He could not, however, but lament that the subject had excited so much warmth. He feared that too many on this account were but ill prepared to consider it with impartiality-He entreated all such to endeavor to be calm and composed. A fair and cool discussion was essentially necessary. The motion he meant to offer was as reconcileable to political expediency as to national humanity. It belonged to no party question. It would in the end be found serviceable to all parties; and to the best interests of the country. He did not come forward to accuse the West India planter, or the Liverpool merchant, or indeed any one concerned in this traffic; but, if blame attached any where, to take shame to himself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, who, having suffered it to be carried on under their own authority were all of them participators in the guilt. ​In endeavoring to explain the great business of the day, he said he should call the attention of the house only to the leading features of the slave-trade. Nor should he dwell long upon these. Every one might imagine for himself what must be the natural consequence of such a commerce with Africa. Was it not plain that she must suffer from it? that her savage manners must be rendered still more ferocious? and that a trade of this nature carried on round her coasts, must extend violence and desolation to her very centre? It was well known that the natives of Africa were sold as goods, and that numbers of them were continually conveyed away from their country by the owners of British vessels. The question then was, which way the latter came by them. In answer to this question, the privy council report, which was then on the table, afforded evidence the most satisfactory and conclusive. He had found things in it, which had confirmed every proposition he had maintained before, whether this proposition had been gathered from living information of the best authority, or from the histories he had read. But it was unnecessary either to quote the report, or to appeal to history on this occasion. Plain reason and common sense would point out how the poor Africans were obtained. Africa was a country divided into many kingdoms, which had different governments and laws. In many parts the princes were despotic. In others they had a limited rule. But in all of them, whatever the nature of the government was, men were considered as goods and property, and, as such, subject to plunder in the same manner as property in other countries. The persons in power there were naturally fond of our commodities; and to obtain them (which could only be done by the sale of their countrymen) they waged war on one another, or even ravaged their own country when they could find no pretense for quarreling with their neighbors; in their courts of law many poor wretches who were innocent were condemned; and to obtain these commodities in greater abundance, thousands were kidnapped, and torn from their families, and sent into slavery. Such transactions, he said, were recorded in every history of Africa, and the report on the table confirmed them. With respect, however, to these, he should make but one or two observations. If we looked into the reign of Henry the Eighth, we should find a parallel for one of them. We should find that similar convictions took place; and that penalties followed conviction. With respect to wars, the kings of Africa were never induced to engage in them by public principles, by national glory, and least of all, by the love of their people. This had been stated by those most conversant with the subject, by Dr. Spaarman and Mr. Wadstrom. They had conversed with these princes, and had learned from their own mouths, that to procure slaves was the object of their hostilities. Indeed, there was scarcely a single person examined before the privy council, who did not prove that the slave-trade was the source of the tragedies acted upon that extensive continent. Some had endeavored to palliate this circumstance; but there was not one who did not more or less admit it to be true. By one the slave-trade was called the concurrent cause, by the majority it was acknowledged to be the principal motive of the African wars. The same might be said with respect ​to those instances of treachery and injustice in which individuals were concerned. And here lie was sorry to observe that our own countrymen were often guilty. He would only at present advert to the tragedy at Calabar, where two large African villages, having been for some time at war, made peace. This peace was to have been ratified by intermarriages; but some of our captains who were there, seeing the trade would be stopped for a while, sowed dissension again between them. They actually set one village against the other, took a share in the contest, massacred many of the inhabitants, and carried others of them away as slaves. But shocking as this transaction might appear, there was not a single history of Africa to be read, in which scenes of as atrocious a nature were not related. They, he said, who defended this trade, were warped and blinded by their own interests, and would not be convinced of the miseries they were daily heaping on their fellow-creatures. By the countenance they gave it, they had reduced the inhabitants of Africa to a worse state than that of the most barbarous nation. They had destroyed what ought to have been the bond of union and safety among them: they had introduced discord and anarchy among them: they had set kings against their subjects, and subjects against each other: they had rendered every private family wretched: they had, in short, given birth to scenes of injustice and misery not to be found in any other quarter of the globe.
Having said thus much on the subject of procuring slaves in Africa, he would now go to that of the transportation of them. And here he had fondly hoped, that when men with affections and feelings like our own had been torn from their country, and every thing dear to them, he should have found some mitigation of their sufferings; but the sad reverse was the case. This was the most wretched part of the whole subject. He was incapable of impressing the house with what he felt upon it. A description of their conveyance was impossible. So much misery condensed in so little room was more than the human imagination had ever before conceived. Think only of six hundred persons linked together, trying to get rid of each other, crammed in a close vessel with every object that was nauseous and disgusting, diseased, and struggling with all the varieties of wretchedness. It seemed impossible to add any thing more to human misery. Yet, shocking as this description must be felt to be by every man, the transportation had been described by several witnesses from Liverpool to be a comfortable conveyance. Mr. Norris had painted the accommodations on board a slave-ship in the most glowing colors. He had represented them in a manner which would have exceeded his attempts at praise of the most luxurious scenes. Their apartments, he said, were fitted up as advantageously for them as circumstances could possibly admit: they had several meals a day; some, of their own country provisions, with the best sauces of African cookery; and, by way of variety, another meal of pulse, according to the European taste. After breakfast they had water to wash themselves, while their apartments were perfumed with frankincense and lime juice. Before dinner they were amused after the manner of their country: instruments of music were introduced: the song and the dance were ​promoted: games of chance were furnished them: the men played and sang, while the women and girls made fanciful ornaments from beads, with which they were plentifully supplied. They were indulged in all their little fancies, and kept in sprightly humor. Another of them had said, when the sailors were flogged, it was out of the hearing of the Africans, lest it should depress their spirits. He by no means wished to say that such descriptions were wilful misrepresentations. If they were not, it proved that interest or prejudice was capable of spreading a film over the eyes thick enough to occasion total blindness.
Others, however, and these men of the greatest veracity, had given a different account. What would the house think, when by the concurring testimony of these the true history was laid open? The slaves, who had been described as rejoicing in their captivity, were so wrung with misery at leaving their country, that it was the constant practice to set sail in the night, lest they should know the moment of their departure. With respect to their accommodation, the right ankle of one was fastened to the left ankle of another by an iron fetter; and if they were turbulent, by another on the wrists. Instead of the apartments described, they were placed in niches, and along the decks, in such a manner that it was impossible for any one to pass among them, however careful he might be, without treading upon them. Sir George Yonge had testified, that in a slave-ship, on board of which he went, and which had not completed her cargo by two hundred and fifty, instead of the scent of frankincense being perceptible to the nostrils, the stench was intolerable. The allowance of water was so deficient that the slaves were frequently found gasping for life, and almost suffocated. The pulse with which they had been said to be favored, were absolutely English horse beans. The legislature of Jamaica had stated the scantiness both of water and provisions, as a subject which called for the interference of parliament. As Mr. Norris had said the song and the dance were promoted, he could not pass over these expressions without telling the house what they meant. It would have been much more fair if he himself had explained the word promoted. The truth was, that for the sake of exercise, the miserable wretches, loaded with chains and oppressed with disease, were forced to dance by the terror of the lash, and sometimes by the actual use of it. "I," said one of the evidences, "was employed to dance the men, while another person danced the women." Such, then, was the meaning of the word promoted; and it might also be observed, with respect to food, that instruments were sometimes carried out in order to force them to eat; which was the same sort of proof how much they enjoyed themselves in this instance also. With respect to their singing, it consisted of songs of lamentation for the loss of their country. While they sung they were in tears: so that one of the captains, more humane probably than the rest, threatened a woman with a flogging because the mournfulness of her song was too painful for his feelings. Perhaps he could not give a better proof of the sufferings of these injured people, during their passage, than by stating the mortality which accompanied it. This was a species of evidence which was infallible on this ​occasion. Death was a witness which could not deceive them; and the proportion of deaths would not only confirm, but, if possible, even aggravate our suspicion of the misery of the transit, It would be found, upon an average of all the ships upon which evidence had been given, that, exclusively of such as perished before they sailed from Africa, not less than twelve and a half per cent, died on their passage: besides these, the Jamaica report stated that four and a half per cent, died while in the harbors, or on shore before the day of sale, which was only about the space of twelve or fourteen days after their arrival there; and one-third more died in the seasoning: and this iu a climate exactly similar to their own, and where, as some of the witnesses pretended, they were healthy and happy. Thus, out of every lot of one hundred shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine weeks, and not more than fifty lived to become efficient laborers in our islands.
Having advanced thus far in his investigation, he felt, he said, the wickedness of the slave-trade to be so enormous, so dreadful, and irremediable, that he could stop at no alternative short of its abolition. A trade founded on iniquity, and carried on with such circumstances of horror, must be abolished, let the policy of it be what it might; and he had from this time determined, whatever were the consequences, that he would never rest till he had effected that abolition. His mind had indeed been harassed by the objections of the West India planters, who had asserted that the ruin of their property must be the consequence of such a measure. He could not help, however, distrusting their arguments. He could not believe that the Almighty being, who had forbidden the practice of rapine and bloodshed, had made rapine and bloodshed necessary to any part of his universe. He felt a confidence in this persuasion, and took the resolution to act upon it. Light, indeed, soon broke in upon him. The suspicion of his mind was every day confirmed by increasing information, and the evidence he had now to offer upon this point was decisive and complete. The principle upon which he founded the necessity of the abolition was not policy, but justice: but, though justice were the principle of the measure, yet he trusted he should distinctly prove it to be reconcilable with our truest political interest.
In the first place, he asserted that the number of the slaves in the West India islands might be kept up without the introduction of recruits from Africa; and to prove this, he would enumerate the different sources of their mortality. The first was the disproportion of the sexes, there being, upon an average, about five males imported to three females: but this evil, when the slave-trade was 'abolished, would cure itself. The second consisted in the bad condition in which they were brought to the islands, and the methods of preparing them for sale. They arrived frequently in a sickly and disordered state, and then they were made up for the market by the application of astringents, washes, mercurial ointments, and repelling drugs, so that their wounds might be hid These artifices were not only fraudulent, but fatal; but these, it was obvious, would of themselves fall with the trade. A third was, excessive labor joined with improper food; and a fourth was, the extreme dissoluteness of their ​manners. These also would both of them be counteracted by the impossibility of getting further supplies; for owners, now unable to replace those slaves whom they might lose, by speedy purchase in the markets, would be more careful how they treated them in future, and better treatment would be productive of better morals. And here he would just advert to an argument used against those who complained of cruelty in our islands, which was. that it was the interest of masters to treat their slaves with humanity; but surely it was immediate and present, not future and distant, interest, which was the great spring of action in the affairs of mankind. Why did we make laws to punish men? It was their interest to be upright and virtuous; but there was a present impulse continually breaking in upon their better judgment, and an impulse which was known to be contrary to their permanent advantage. It was ridiculous to say that men would be bound by their interest, when gain or ardent passion urged them. It might as well be asserted that a stone could not be thrown into the air, or a body move from place to place, because the principle of gravitation bound them to the surface of the earth. If a planter in the West Indies found himself reduced in his profits, he did not usually dispose of any part of his slaves; and his own gratifications were never given up so long as there was a possibility of making any retrenchment in the allowance of his slaves. But to return to the subject which he had left: He was happy to state, that as all the causes of the decrease which he had stated might be remedied, so, by the progress of light and reformation, these remedies had been gradually coming into practice; and that, as these had increased, the decrease of slaves had in an equal proportion been lessened. By the gradual adoption of these remedies, he could prove from the report on the table, that the decrease of slaves in Jamaica had lessened to such a degree, that from the year 1774 to the present it was not quite one in a hundred, and that in fact they were at present in a state of increase; for that the births on that island, at this moment, exceeded the deaths by one thousand or eleven hundred per annum. Barbadoes, Nevis, Antigua, and the Bermudas were, like Jamaica, lessening their decrease, and holding forth an evident and reasonable expectation of a speedy state of increase by natural population. But allowing the number of negroes even to decrease for a time, there were methods which would insure the welfare of the West India islands. The lands there might be cultivated by fewer hands, and this to greater advantage to the proprietors and to this country, by the produce of cinnamon, coffee, and cotton, than by that of sugar. The produce of the plantations might also be considerably increased, even in the case of sugar, with less hands than were at present employed, if the owners of them would but introduce machines of husbandry. Mr. Long himself, long resident as a planter, had proved, upon his own estate, that the plow, though so little used in the West Indies, did the service of a hundred slaves, and caused the same ground to produce three hogsheads of sugar, which, when cultivated by slaves, would only produce two. The division of work, which, in free and civilized countries, was the grand source of wealth, and the reduction of the number of domestic servants, of whom not less than from twenty to forty were kept in ​ordinary families, afforded other resources for this purpose. But granting that all these suppositions should be unfounded, and that every one of these substitutes should fail for a time, the planters would be indemnified, as is the case in all transactions of commerce, by the increased price of their produce in the British market. Thus, by contending against the abolition, they were defeated in every part of the argument. But he would never give up the point, that [he number of slaves could be kept up by natural population, and without any dependence whatever on the slave-trade. He therefore called upon the house again. to abolish it as a criminal waste of life; it was utterly unnecessary; he had proved it so by documents contained in the report. The merchants of Liverpool, indeed, had thought otherwise, but he should be cautious how he assented to their opinions. They declared last year that it was a losing trade at two slaves to a ton, and yet they pursued it when restricted to five slaves to three tons. he believed, however, that it was upon the whole a losing concern; in the same manner as the lottery would be a losing adventure to any company who should buy all the tickets. Here and there an individual gained a large prize, but the majority of adventurers gained nothing. The same merchants, too, had asserted that the town of Liverpool would be ruined by the abolition. But Liverpool did not depend for its consequence upon the slave-trade. The whole export tonnage from that place amounted to no less than 170,000 tons, whereas the export part of it to Africa amounted only to 13,000. Liverpool, he was sure, owed its greatness to other and very different causes; the slave-trade bearing but a small proportion to its other trades. Having gone through that part of the subject which related to the slaves, he would now answer two objections which he had frequently heard started. The first of these was, that the abolition of the slave-trade would operate to the total ruin of our navy, and to the increase of that of our rivals. For an answer to these assertions, he referred to what he considered to be the most valuable part of the report, and for which the house and the country were indebted to the indefatigable exertions of Mr. Clarkson. By the report, it appeared that instead of the slave-trade being a nursery for British seamen, it was their grave. It appeared that more seamen died in that trade in one year than in the whole remaining trade of the country in two. Out of 910 sailors in it, 216 died in the year, while upon a fair average of the same number of men employed in the trades to the East and West Indies, Petersburgh, Newfoundland, and Greenland, no more than 87 died. It appeared also, that out of 3,170, who had left Liverpool in the slave-ships in the year 1787, only 1,428 had returned. And here, while he lamented the loss which the country thus annually sustained in her seamen, he had additionally to lament the barbarous usage which they experienced, and which this trade, by the natural tendency to harden the heart, exclusively produced. He would just read an extract of a letter from Governor Parry, of Barbadoes, to Lord Sydney, one of the secretaries of state. The governor declared that he could no longer contain himself on account of the ill treatment which the British sailors endured at the hands of their savage captains These were obliged to have ​their vessels strongly manned, not only on account of the unhealthiness of the climate of Africa, but of the necessity of guarding the slaves, and preventing and suppressing insurrections; and when they arrived in the West Indies, and were out of all danger from the latter, they quarreled with their men on the most frivolous pretenses, on purpose to discharge them, and thus save the payment of supernumerary wages home. Thus many were left in a diseased and deplorable state, either to perish by sickness, or to enter into foreign service; great numbers of whom were forever lost to their country. The governor concluded by declaring that the enormities attendant on this trade were so great as to demand the immediate interference of the legislature.
The next objection to the abolition was, that if we were to relinquish the slave-trade, our rivals, the French, would take it up; so that while we should suffer by the measure, the evil would still go on, and this even to its former extent. This was, indeed, a very weak argument; and, if it would defend the continuance of the slave-trade, might equally be urged in favor of robbery, murder, and every species of wickedness, which, if we did not practice, others would commit. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that they were to take it up, what good would it do them? What advantages, for instance, would they derive from this pestilential commerce to their marine? Should not we, on the other hand, be benefited by this change 1 Would they not be obliged to come to us, in consequence of the cheapness of our manufactures, for what they wanted for the African market? But he would not calumniate the French nation so much as to suppose that they would carry on the trade if we were to relinquish it. He believed, on the other hand, that they would abolish it also. Mr. Necker, the present minister of France, was a man of religious principle; and, in his work upon the administration of the finances, had recorded his abhorrence of this trade. He was happy also to relate an anecdote of the present king of France, which proved that he was a friend to the abolition; for, being petitioned to dissolve a society, formed at Paris, for the annihilation of the slave-trade, his majesty answered that he would not, and was happy to hear that so humane an association was formed in his dominions. And here, having mentioned the society in Paris, he could not help paying a due compliment to that established in London for the same purpose, which had labored with the greatest assiduity to make this important subject understood, and which had conducted itself with so much judgment and moderation as to have interested men of all religions, and to have united them in their cause.
There was another topic which he would submit to the notice of the house before he concluded. They were, perhaps, not aware that a fair and honorable trade might be substituted in the natural productions of Africa, so that our connection with that continent in the way of commercial advantage need not oe lost. The natives had already made some advances in it; and if they had not appeared so forward in raising and collecting their own produce for sale as in some other countries, it was to be imputed to the slave-trade; but remove the cause, and Africa would soon emerge from her present ignorant and indolent state. Civilization would go on with her as well as with other nations. ​Europe, three or four centuries ago, was in many parts as barbarous as Africa at present, and chargeable with as bad practices. For what would be said, if, so late as the middle of the thirteenth century, he could find a parallel there for the slave-trade? Yes. This parallel was to be found even in England. The people of Bristol, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, had a regular market for children, which were bought by the Irish; but the latter having experienced a general calamity, which they imputed as a judgment from heaven on account of this wicked traffic, abolished it. The only thing, therefore, which he had to solicit of the house, was to show that they are now as enlightened as the Irish were four centuries back, by refusing to buy the children of other nations. He hoped they would do it. He hoped, too, they would do it in an unqualified manner. Nothing less than a total abolition of the trade would do away the evils complained of. The legislature of Jamaica, indeed, had thought that regulations might answer the purpose. Their report had recommended that no person should be kidnapped, or permitted to be made a slave, contrary to the customs of Africa. But might he not be reduced to this state very unjustly, and yet by no means contrary to the African laws? Besides, how could we distinguish between those who were justly or unjustly reduced to it? Could we discover them by their physiognomy? But if we could, who would believe that the British captains would be influenced by any regulations made in this country, to refuse to purchase those who had not been fairly, honestly, and uprightly enslaved? They who were offered to us for sale were brought, some of them, three or four thousand miles, and exchanged like cattle from one to another, till they reached the coast. But who could return these to their homes, or make them compensation for their sufferings during their long journeyings? He would now conclude by begging pardon of the house for having detained them so long. He could indeed have expressed his own convictions in fewer words. He needed only to have made one or two short statements, and to have quoted the commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder." But he thought it his duty to lay the whole of the case, and the whole of its guilt before them. They would see now that no mitigations, no palliatives, would either be efficient or admissible. Nothing short of an absolute abolition could be adopted. This they owed to Africa; they owed it, too, to their own moral characters. And he hoped they would follow up the principle of one of the repentant African captains, who had gone before the committee of privy council as a voluntary witness, and that they would make Africa all the atonement in their power for the multifarious injuries she had received at the hands of British subjects. With respect to these injuries, their enormity and extent, it might be alleged in their excuse, that they were not fully acquainted with them till that moment, and therefore not answerable for their former existence; but now they could no longer plead ignorance concerning them. They had seen them brought directly before their eyes, and they must decide for themselves, and must justify to the world and their own consciences the facts and principles upon which their decision was formed.
Mr. Wilberforce having concluded his speech, which lasted three hours and ​a half, read, and laid on the table of the house, as subjects for their future discussion, nine propositions, which he had deduced from the evidence contained in the privy council report, and of which the following is the abridged substance:
1. That the number of slaves annually carried from the coast of Africa, in British vessels, was about 38,000, of which, on an average, 22,500 were carried to the British islands, and that of the latter, only 17,500 were retained there.
2. That these slaves, according to the evidence on the table, consisted, first, of prisoners of war; secondly, of free persons sold for debt, or on account of real or imputed crimes, particularly adultery and witchcraft; in which cases they were frequently sold with their whole families, and sometimes for the profit of those by whom they were condemned; thirdly, of domestic slaves sold for the profit of their masters, in some places at the will of the masters, and in others, on being condemned by them for real or imputed crimes; fourthly, of persons made slaves by various acts of oppression, violence, or fraud, committed either by the princes and chiefs of those countries on their subjects, or by private individuals on each other; or, lastly, by Europeans engaged in this traffic.
3. That the trade so carried on had necessarily a tendency to occasion frequent and cruel wars among the natives; to produce unjust convictions and punishments for pretended or aggravated crimes; to encourage acts of oppression, violence, and fraud, and to obstruct the natural course of civilization and improvement in those countries.
4. That Africa, in its present state, furnished several valuable articles of commerce which were partly peculiar to itself, but that it was adapted to the production of others, with which we were now either wholly, or in great part, supplied by foreign nations. That an extensive commerce with Africa might be substituted in these commodities, so as to afford a return for as many articles as had annually been carried thither in British vessels; and, lastly, that such a commerce might reasonably be expected to increase by the progress of civilization there.
5. That the slave-trade was peculiarly destructive to the seamen employed in it; and that the mortality there had been much greater than in any British vessels employed upon the same coast in any other service or trade.
6. That the mode of transporting the slaves from Africa to the West Indies necessarily exposed them to many and grievous sufferings, for which no regulations could provide an adequate remedy; and that in consequence thereof a large proportion had annually perished during the voyage.
7. That a large proportion had also perished in the harbors in the West Indies, from the diseases contracted in the voyage and the treatment of the same, previously to their being sold, and that this loss amounted to four and a half per cent, of the imported slaves.
8. That the loss of the newly imported slaves, within the three first years after their importation, bore a large proportion to the whole number imported.
9. That the natural increase of population among the slaves in the islands appeared to have been impeded principally by the following causes: First, of the inequality of the sexes in the importations from Africa Secondly, by ​the general dissoluteness of manners among the slaves, and the want of proper regulations for the encouragement of marriages and of rearing children among them. Thirdly, by the particular diseases which were prevalent among them, and which were in some instances to be attributed to too severe labor, or rigorous treatment, and in others to insufficient or improper food. Fourthly, by those diseases which affected a large proportion of negro children in their infancy, and by those to which the negroes newly imported from Africa had been found to be particularly liable.
These propositions having been laid upon the table of the house, lord Penrhyn rose in behalf of the planters, and next after him, Mr. Gascoyne, (both members for Liverpool,) in behalf of the merchants concerned in the latter place. They both predicted the ruin and misery which would inevitably follow the abolition of the trade. The former said that no less than seventy millions were mortgaged upon lands in the West Indies, all of which would be lost. Mr. Wilberforce therefore should have made a motion to pledge the house to the repayment of this sum before he had brought forward his propositions. Compensation ought to have been agreed upon as a previously necessary measure. The latter said that in consequence of the bill of last year, many ships were laid up and many seamen out of employ. His constituents had large capitals engaged in the trade, and if it were to be wholly done away, they would suffer from not knowing where to employ them. They both joined in asserting that Mr. Wilberforce had made so many misrepresentations in all the branches of this subject, that no reliance whatever was to be placed on the picture which he had chosen to exhibit. They should speak, however, more fully to this point when the propositions were discussed.
The latter declaration called up Mr. Wilberforce again, who observed that he had no intention of misrepresenting any fact. He did not know that he had done it in any one instance; but, if he had, it would be easy to convict him out of the report upon the table.
Mr. Burke then arose: He would not, he said, detain the committee long Indeed he was not able, weary and indisposed as he then felt himself, even if he had an inclination to do it; but as, on account of his other parliamentary duty, he might not have it in his power to attend the business now before them in its course, he would take that opportunity of stating his opinion upon it.
And, first, the house, the nation, and all Europe w r ere under great obligations to Mr. Wilberforce for having brought this important subject forward. He had done it in a manner the most masterly, impressive, and eloquent. He had laid down his principles so admirably, and with so much order and force, that his speech had equaled any thing he had ever heard in modern oratory, and perhaps it had not been excelled by any thing to be found in ancient times. As to the slave-trade itself, there could not be two opinions about it where men were not interested. A trade, begun in savage war, prosecuted with unheard of barbarity, continued during the transportation with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ending in perpetual exile and slavery, was a trade so horrid in all its circumstances that it was impossible to produce a single argument in its ​favor. On the ground of prudence, nothing could be said in defense of it, nor could it be justified by necessity. It was necessity alone that could be brought to justify inhumanity; but no case' of necessity could be made out strong enough to justify this monstrous traffic. It was therefore the duty of the house to put an end to it, and this without further delay.
With respect to the consequences mentioned by the two members for Liverpool, he had a word or two to offer upon them. Lord Penrhyn had talked of millions to be lost and paid for. But seeing no probability of any loss ultimately, he could see no necessity for compensation. He believed, on the other hand, that the planters would be great gainers by those wholesome regulations which they would be obliged to make if the slave-trade were abolished. He did not, however, flatter them with the idea that this gain would be immediate. Perhaps they might experience inconveniences at first, and even some loss. But what then? With their loss, their virtue would be the greater. And in this light he hoped the house would consider the matter; for, if they were called upon to do an act of virtuous energy and heroism, they ought to think it right to submit to temporary disadvantages for the sake of truth, justice, humanity, and the prospect of greater happiness.
The other member, Mr. Gascoyne, had said that his constituents, if the trade were abolished, could not employ their capitals elsewhere. But whether they could or not, it was the duty of that house, if they put them into a traffic which was shocking to humanity and disgraceful to the nation, to change their application, and not to allow them to be used to a barbarous purpose. He believed, however, that the merchants of Liverpool would find no difficulty on this head. All capitals required active motion. It was in their nature not to remain passive and unemployed. They would soon turn them into other channels. This they had done themselves during the American war; for the slave-trade was then almost wholly lost, and yet they had their ships employed, either as transports in the service of government, or in other ways.
As he now called upon the house not to allow any conjectural losses to become impediments in the way of the abolition of the slave-trade, so he called upon them to beware how they suffered any representations of the happiness of the state of slavery in our islands to influence them against so glorious a measure. Nothing made a happy slave but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grows callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride is lost, the slave feels comfort. In fact, he is no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare,
"Man is a being holding large discourse, Looking before and after."
But a slave was incapable of looking before and after. He had no motive to do it. He was a mere passive instrument in the hands of others, to be used at their discretion. Though living, he was dead as to all voluntary agency. Though moving amidst the creation with an erect form, and with the shape and semblance of a human being, he was a nullity as a man. ​Mr. Fox observed, that a trade in human flesh and sinews was so scandalous, that it ought not openly to be carried on by any government whatever, and much less by that of a Christian country. With regard to the regulation of the slave-trade, he knew of no such thing as a regulation of robbery and murder. There was no medium. The legislature must either abolish it, or plead guilty of all the wickedness which had been shown to attend it. lie would say a word or two with respect to the conduct of foreign nations on this subject. It was possible that these, when they heard that the matter had been discussed in that house, might follow the example, or they might go before us and set one themselves. If this were to happen, though we might be the losers, humanity would be the gainer. He himself had been thought sometimes to use expressions relative to France which were too harsh, and as if he could only treat her as the enemy of this country. Politically speaking, France was our rival. But he well knew the distinction between political enmity and illiberal prejudice. If there was any great and enlightened nation in Europe, it was France, which was as likely as any country upon the face of the globe to catch a spark from the light of our fire, and to act upon the present subject with warmth and enthusiasm. France had often been improperly stimulated by her ambition.; and he had no doubt but that, in the present instance, she would readily follow its honorable dictates.
Aldermen Newnham, Sawbridge, and Watson, though they wished well to the cause of humanity, could not, as representatives of the city of London, give their concurrence to a measure which would injure it so essentially as that of the abolition of the slave-trade. This trade might undoubtedly be put under wholesome regulations, and made productive of great commercial advantages. But if it were abolished, it would render the city of London one scene of bankruptcy and ruin. It became the house to take care, while they were giving way to the goodness of their hearts, that they did not contribute to the ruin of the mercantile interests of their country.
Mr. Martin stated that he was so well satisfied with the speech of the honorable gentleman who had introduced the propositions, and with the language held out by other distinguished members on this subject, that he felt himself more proud than ever of being an Englishman. He hoped and believed that the melancholy predictions of the worthy aldermen would not prove true, and that the citizens of London would have too much public spirit to wish that a great national object, which comprehended the great duties of humanity and justice, should be set aside, merely out of consideration to their own private interests.
Mr. William Smith would not detain the house long at that late hour upon this important subject; but he could not help testifying the great satisfaction he felt at the manner in which the honorable gentleman who opened the debate (if it could be so called) had treated it. He approved of the propositions as the best mode of bringing the decision to a happy issue. He gave Mr. Fox great credit for the open and manly way in which he had manifested his abhorrence of this trade, and for the support he meant to give to the total and unqualified abolition of it; for he was satisfied that the more it was ​inquired into, the more it would be found that nothing short of abolition would cure the evil. With respect to certain assertions of the members for Liverpool, and certain melancholy predictions about the consequences of such an event, which others had held out, he desired to lay in his claim for observation upon them, when the great question should come before the house.
Soon after this the house broke up; and the discussion of the propositions, which was the next parliamentary measure intended, was postponed to a future day, which was sufficiently distant to give all the parties concerned time to make the necessary preparations for it.
Of this interval the committee for the abolition availed themselves to thank Mr. Wilberforce for the very able and satisfactory manner in which he had stated to the house his propositions for the abolition of the slave-trade, and for the unparalleled assiduity and perseverance with which he had all along endeavored to accomplish this object, as well as to take measures themselves for the further promotion of it. Their opponents availed themselves of this interval also. But that which now embarrassed them, was the evidence contained in the privy council report, They had no idea, considering the number of witnesses they had sent to be examined, that this evidence, when duly weighed, could by right reasoning have given birth to the sentiments which had been displayed in the speeches of the most distinguished members of the house of commons, or to the contents of the propositions which had been laid upon their table. They were thunder-struck as it were by their own weakness: and from this time they were determined, if possible, to get rid of it as a standard for decision, or to interpose every parliamentary delay in their power.
On the twenty-first of May, the subject came again before the attention of the house. It was ushered in, as was expected, by petitions collected in the interim, and which were expressive of the frightful consequences which would attend the abolition of the slave-trade.
Mr. Wilberforce moved the order of the day, for the house to go into a committee of the whole house on the report of the privy council, and the several matters of evidence already upon the table relative to the slave-trade.
Mr. Alderman Sawbridge immediately arose, and asked Mr. Wilberforce if he meant to adduce any other evidence besides that in the privy council report in behalf of his propositions, or to admit other witnesses, if such could be found, to invalidate them. Mr. Wilberforce replied, that he was quite satisfied with the report on the table. It would establish all his propositions. He should call no witnesses himself: as to permission to others to call them, that must be determined by the house.
This question and this answer gave birth immediately to great disputes upon the subject. Aldermen Sawbridge, Wewnham, and Watson; Lords Penrhyn and Maitland; Messrs. Gascoyne, Marsham, and others spcke against the admission of the evidence which had been laid upon the table. They contended that it was insufficient, defective, and contradictory; that it was ex parte evidence; that it had been manufactured by ministers; that it was founded chiefly on hearsay, and that the greatest part of it was false; that it had undergone ​no cross-examination; that it was unconstitutional; and that, if they admitted it, they would establish a dangerous precedent, and abandon their rights. It was urged on the other hand by Mr. Courtenay, that it could not be ex parte evidence, because it contained testimony on both sides of the question. The circumstance also of its being contradictory, which had been alleged against it, proved that it was the result of an impartial examination. Mr. Fox observed that it was perfectly admissible. He called upon those who took the other side of the question to say why, if it was really inadmissible, they had not opposed it at first. It had now been a long time on the table, and no fault had been found with it. The truth was, it did not suit them, and they were determined by a side wind as it were to put an end to the inquiry.
In the course of the debate much warmth of temper was manifest on both sides. The expression of Mr. Fox in a former debate, "that the slave-trade could not be regulated, because there could be no regulation of robbery and murder," was brought up, and construed by planters in the house as a charge of these crimes upon themselves. Mr. Fox, however, would not retract the expression. He repeated it. He had no notion, however, that any individual would have taken it to himself. If it contained any reflection at all, it was on the whole parliament who had sanctioned such a trade. Mr. Molyneux rose up, and animadverted severely on the character of Mr. Ramsay, one of the evidences in the privy council report, during his residence in the "West Indies. This called up Sir William Dolben and Sir Charles Middleton in his defense, the latter of whom bore honorable testimony to his virtues from an intimate acquaintance with him, and a residence in the same village with him for twenty years. Mr. Molyneux spoke also in angry terms of the measure of the abolition. To annihilate the trade, he said, and to make no compensation on account of it, was an act of swindling. Mr. Macnamara called the measure hypocritical, fanatic, and methodistical. Mr. Pitt was so irritated at the insidious attempt to set aside the privy council report, when no complaint had been alleged against it before, that he was quite off his guard, and he thought it right afterwards to apologize for the warmth into which he had been betrayed. The speaker, too, was obliged frequently to interfere. On this occasion no less than thirty members spoke. And there had probably been few seasons when so much disorder had been discoverable in that house.
The result of the debate was, a permission to those interested in the continuance of the slave-trade to bring counsel to the bar on the twenty-sixth of May, and then to introduce such witnesses as might throw further light on the propositions in the shortest time: for Mr. Pitt only acquiesced in this new measure on a supposition "that there would be no unnecessary delay, as he could by no means submit to the ultimate procrastination of so important a business." He even hoped (and in this hope he was joined by Mr. Fox) that those concerned would endeavor to bring the whole of the evidence they meant to offer at the first examination.
On the day appointed, the house met for the purpose now specified; when Alderman Newnham, thinking that such an important question should not be ​decided but in a full assembly of the representatives of the nation, moved for a call of the house on that day fortnight. Mr. Wilberforce stated that he had no objection to such a measure, believing the greater the number present, the more favorable it would be to his cause. This motion, however, produced a debate and a division, in which it appeared that there were one hundred and fifty-eight in favor of it, and twenty-eight against it. The business of the day now commenced. The house went into a committee, and Sir William Dolben was put into the chair. Mr. Serjeant Le Blanc was then called in. He made an able speech in behalf of his clients; and introduced John Barnes, esquire, as his first witness, whose examination took up the remainder of the day. By this step they who were interested in the continuance of the trade attained their wishes, for they had now got possession of the ground with their evidence; and they knew they could keep it almost as long as they pleased, for the purposes of delay.
At length, on the ninth of June, by which time it was supposed that new light, and this in sufficient quantity, would have been thrown upon the propositions, it appeared that only two witnesses had been fully heard. The examinations, therefore, were continued, and they went on till the twenty-third. On this day, the order for the call of the house, which had been prolonged, standing unrepealed, there was a large attendance of members. A motion was then made to get rid of the business altogether, but it failed. It was now seen, however, that it was impossible to bring the question to a final decision in this session, for they who were interested in it affirmed that they had yet many important witnesses to introduce. Alderman Newnham, therefore, by the consent of Mr. Wilberforce, moved that "the further consideration of the subject be deferred to the next session."
At the next session, in January, 1790, Mr. Wilberforce carried a motion that witnesses should be examined in future in a committee-room, which should be open to all members. This was important, as the examinations otherwise might have taken up ten years. In the interim, Mr. Clarkson had again traversed the kingdom, and collected a respectable body of witnesses. He had visited over four hundred vessels. By the 20th of April, all the witnesses in favor of the trade had been examined, and an effort was made to have the case argued immediately, without hearing the evidence on the other side; but the eloquence of Wilberforce prevailed, supported powerfully by Pitt and Fox, and the witnesses for their side were also examined. The session closed before half the evidence deemed necessary was heard.
Forced from home and all its pleasures, Afric's coast I left forlorn, To increase a stranger's treasures, O'er the raging billows borne; Men from England bought and sold me, Paid my price in paltry gold; But, though theirs they have enroll'd me, Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever, What are England's rights, I ask, Me from my delights to sever Me to torture, me to task? Fleecy locks and black complexion Cannot forfeit Nature's claim; Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in black and white the same.
Why did all creating Nature Make the plant, for which we toil? Sighs must fan it, tears must water, Sweat of ours must dress the soil. Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, Lolling at your jovial boards, Think, how many backs have smarted For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as you sometimes tell us, Is there One, who rules on high? Has He bid you buy and sell us, Speaking from his throne, the sky? Ask Him, if your knotted scourges, Fetters, blood-extorting screws, Are the means, which duty urgea Agents of His will to use I
Hark! He answers. Wild tornadoes Strewing yonder sea with wrecks, Wasting towns, plantations, meadows, Are the voice with which He speaks. He, foreseeing what vexations Afric's sons should undergo, Fix'd their tyrant's habitations Where his whirlwinds answer — No I
By our blood in Afric wasted, Ere our necks receiv'd the chain; By the miseries, which we tasted Crossing, in your barks, the main; By our sufferings, since you brought us To the man-degrading mart, All sustain'd by patience, taught us Only by a broken heart.
Deem our nation brutes no longer, Till some reason you shall find Worthier of regard, and stronger, Than the color of our kind. Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings Tarnish all your boasted powers, Prove that you have human feelings, Ere you proudly question ours.
This little piece, Cowper presented in manuscript to some of his friends in London; and these conceiving it to contain a powerful appeal in behalf of the injured Africans, joined in printing it. Having ordered it on the finest hot pressed paper, and folded it up in a small and neat form, they gave it the printed title of "A Subject for Conversation at the Tea-table." After this, they sent many thousand copies of it in franks into the country. From one it spread to another, till it traveled almost over the whole island. Falling at length into the hands of the musician, it was set to music; and it then found its way into the streets, both of the metropolis and of the country, where it was sung as a ballad, and where it gave a plain account of the subject, with an appropriate feeling to those who heard it.
Nor was the philanthropy of Mr. Wedgwood less instrumental in turning the popular feeling in favor of the cause. He made his manufactory contribute to this end. He took the seal of the committee for his model; and he produced a beautiful cameo, of a less size, of which the ground was a most delicate white, but the negro, who was seen imploring compassion in the middle of it, was in his own native color. Mr. Wedgwood made a liberal donation of these, when finished, among his friends. They, to whom they were sent, did not lay them up in their cabinets, but gave them away likewise. They were soon, like the Negro's Complaint, in different parts of the kingdom. Some had them inlaid in gold on the lid of their snuff-boxes. Of the ladies several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length, the taste for wearing them became general; and thus the fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honorable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity, and freedom.
​St. Domingo, in consequence of the revolution which had been effected there, and an insurrection had broken out in the British island of Dominica. All
had been industriously exaggerated in print, and produced a terrific effect upon many members. In this unfavorable frame of mind they went into the house on the day appointed.
On the eighteenth of April, 1791, Mr. Wilberforce made his motion. He began by expressing a hope that the present debate, instead of exciting asperity and confirming prejudice, would tend to produce a general conviction o. the truth of what in fact was incontrovertible; that the abolition of the slave-trade was indispensably required of them, not only by morality and religion, but by sound policy. Die stated that he should argue the matter from the evidence. lie adverted to the character, situation, and means of information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives of Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following manner:
He would begin, he said, with the first boundary of the trade. Captain Wilson and Captain Hills, of his majesty's navy, and Mr. Dalrymple of the land service, had concurred in stating, that in the country contiguous to the river Senegal, when slave-ships arrived there, armed parties were regularly sent out in the evening, who scoured the country, and brought in their prey. The wretched victims were to be seen in the morning bound back to back in the huts ou shore, whence they were conveyed, tied hand and foot, to the slave ships. The design of these ravages was obvious, because, when the slave-trade was stopped, they ceased. Mr. Kiernan spoke of the constant depredations by the Moors to procure slaves. Mr. Wadstrom confirmed them. The latter gentleman showed also that they were excited by presents of brandy, gunpowder, and such other incentives; and that they were not only earned on by one community against another, but that the kings were stimulated to practice them in their own territories, and on their own subjects: and in one instance a chieftain, who, when intoxicated, could not resist the demands of the slave-merchants, had expressed, in a moment of reason, a due sense of his own crime, and had reproached his christian seducers. Abundant also were the instances of private rapine. Individuals were kidnapped whilst in their fields and gardens. There was an universal feeling of distrust and apprehension there. The natives never went any distance from home without arms; and when Captain Wilson asked them the reason of it, they pointed to a slave ship then lying within sight.
On the windward coast, it appeared from Lieutenant Story and Mr. Bowman, that the evils just mentioned existed, if possible, in a still higher degree. They had seen the remains of villages which had been burned, whilst the fields of corn were still standing beside them, and every other trace of recent desolation. Here an agent was sent to establish a settlement in the country, and to send to the ships such slaves as he might obtain. The orders he received from the captain were, that "he was to encourage the chieftains by brandy and gunpowder to go to war, to make slaves." This he did. The chieftains ​performed their part in return. The neighboring villages were surrounded and set on fire in the night. The inhabitants were seized when making their escape; and, being brought to the agent, were by him forwarded to his principal on the coast. Mr. How, a botanist in the service of government, stated that on the arrival of an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, while he was there, a native chief immediately sent forth armed parties, who brought in a supply of all descriptions in the night.
All these atrocities, he said, were fully substantiated by the evidence; and here he should do injustice to his cause if he were not to make a quotation from the speech of Mr. Bryan Edwards in the assembly of Jamaica, who, though he was hostile to his propositions, had yet the candor to deliver himself in the following manner there: "I am persuaded," says he, "that Mr. Wilberforce has been rightly informed as to the manner in which slaves are generally procured. The intelligence I have collected from my own negroes abundantly confirms his account; and I have not the smallest doubt, that in Africa the effects of this trade are precisely such as he has represented them. The whole, or the greatest part of that immense continent, is a field of warfare and desolation; a wilderness in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the slave-trade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the sugar islands may be convinced that it is so, who will inquire of any African negroes, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity. The assertion that it is otherwise is mockery and insult."
It was another effect of this trade that it corrupted the morals of those who carried it on. Every fraud was used to deceive the ignorance of the natives by false weights and measures, adulterated commodities, and other impositions of a like sort, These frauds were even acknowledged by many who had themselves practiced them in obedience to the orders of their superiors. For the honor of the mercantile character of the country, such a traffic ought immediately to be suppressed.
With respect to the miseries of the middle passage, he had said so much on a former occasion, that he would spare the feelings of the committee as much as he could. He would therefore state that the evidence which was before them confirmed all those scenes of wretchedness, which he had then described; the same suffering from a state of suffocation by being crowded together; the same dancing in fetters; the same melancholy singing; the same eating by compulsion; the same despair; the same insanity; and all the other abominations which characterized the trade. New instances, however, had occurred, where these wretched men had resolved on death to terminate their woes Some had destroyed themselves by refusing sustenance, in spite of threats and punishments. Others had thrown themselves into the sea; and more than one, when in the act of drowning, were seen to wave their hands in triumph, "exulting (to use the words of an eye-witness) that they had escaped." Yet these and similar things, when viewed through the African medium he had mention​mentioned, took a different shape and color. Captain Knox, an adverse witness, had maintained that slaves lay during the night in tolerable comfort. And yet he confessed that in a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons, in which he had carried two hundred and ninety slaves, the latter had not all of them room to lie on their backs. How comfortably, then, must they have lain in his subsequent voyages, for he carried afterwards, in a vessel of one hundred and eight tons, four hundred and fifty, and in a vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, no less than six hundred slaves. Another instance of African deception was to be found in the testimony of Captain Frazer, one of the most humane captains in the trade. It had been said of him that he had held hot coals to the mouth of a slave to compel him to eat.
But upon whom did the cruelties thus arising out of the prosecution of this barbarous traffic fall? Upon a people with feeling and intellect like ourselves. One witness had spoken of the acuteness of their understanding; another of the extent of their memories; a third of their genius for commerce; a fourth of their proficiency in manufactures at home. Many had admired their gentle and peaceable disposition, their cheerfulness, and their hospitality. Even they, who were nominally slaves in Africa, lived a happy life. A witness against the abolition had described them as sitting and eating with their masters in the true style of patriarchal simplicity and comfort. Were these, then, a people incapable of civilization? The argument that they were an inferior species had been proved to be false.
Mr. Wilberforce, after showing in a very lucid manner, and by incontestable arguments, that the abolition of the trade in question, instead of being an injury, would be a lasting benefit to the West India islands, concluded by declaring that, interested as he might be supposed to be in the final event of the question, he was comparatively indifferent as to the present decision of the house upon it. Whatever they might do, the people of Great Britain, he was confident, would abolish the slave-trade when, as would soon happen, its injustice and cruelty should be fairly laid before them. It was a nest of serpents, which would never have existed so long, but for the darkness in which they lay hid. The light of day would now be let in on them, and they would vanish from the sight. For himself, he declared that he was engaged in a work which he would never abandon. The consciousness of the justice of his cause would carry him forward, though he were alone; but he could not but derive encouragement from considering with whom he was associated. Let us not, he said, despair. It is a blessed cause; and success ere long will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory. We have obtained for these poor creatures the recognition of their human nature, which for a while was most shamefully denied them. This is the first fruit of our efforts. Let us persevere, and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we disist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name; till we have released ourselves from the load of guilt under which we at present labor; and till we have extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, which our posterity, looking back to the ​history of these enlightened times, will scarcely believe had been suffered to exist so long, a disgrace and a dishonor to our country.
He then moved that the chairman be instructed to move for leave to bring in a bill to prevent the further importation of slaves into the British colonies in the West Indies.
Colonel Tarleton immediately rose up and began by giving an historical account of the trade from the reign of Elizabeth to the present time. He then proceeded to the sanction which parliament had always given it. Hence it could not be withdrawn without a breach of faith. Hence, also, the private property embarked in it was sacred; nor could it be invaded unless an adequate compensation were given in return. They who had attempted the abolition of the trade were led away by a mistaken humanity. The Africans themselves had no objection to its continuance. With respect to the middle passage, he believed the mortality there to be on an average only five in the hundred; whereas in regiments sent out to the West Indies, the average loss in the year was about ten and a half per cent. The slave-trade was absolutely necessary, if we meant to carry on our West India commerce; for many attempts had been made to cultivate the lands in the different islands by white laborers, but they had always failed. It had also the merit of keeping up a number of seamen in readiness for the state. Lord Rodney had stated this as one of its advantages on the breaking out of a war. Liverpool alone could supply nine hundred and ninety-three seamen annually.
He would now advert to the connections dependent upon the African trade. It was the duty of the house to protect the planters, whose lives had been, and were then exposed to imminent dangers, and whose property had undergone an unmerited depreciation, and to what could this depreciation, and to what could the late insurrection at Dominica be imputed, which had been saved from horrid carnage and midnight butchery only by the adventitious arrival of two British regiments? They could only be attributed to the long delayed question of the abolition of the slave-trade; and if this question were to go much longer unsettled, Jamaica would be endangered also. To members of landed property he would observe, that the abolition would lessen the commerce of the country, and increase the national debt and the number of their taxes. The minister, he hoped, who patronized this wild scheme, had some new pecuniary resource in store to supply the deficiencies it would occasion.
Mr. Grosvenor then rose: He complimented the humanity of Mr. Wilberforce, though he differed from him on the subject of his motion. He himself had read only the privy council report; and he wished for no other evidence. The question had been delayed two years. Had the abolition been so clear a point as it was said to be, it could not have needed either so much evidence or time.
He had heard a good deal about kidnapping and other barbarous practices. He was sorry for them. But these were the natural consequences of the laws of Africa: and it became us as wise men to turn them to our own advantage ​The slave-trade was certainly not an amiable trade. Neither was that of a butcher; but yet it was a very necessary one.
There was great reason to doubt the propriety of the present motion. He had twenty reasons for disapproving of it. The first was, that the thing was impossible. lie needed not, therefore, to give the rest. Parliament, indeed, might relinquish the trade. But to whom? To foreigners, who would continue it, and without the humane regulations which were applied to it by his countrymen.
He would give advice to the house on this subject in the words which the late Alderman Beckford used on a different occasion: "Meddle not with troubled waters; they will be found to be bitter waters, and waters of affliction." He again admitted that the slave-trade was not an amiable trade; but he would not gratify his humanity at the expense of the interests of his country; and he thought we should not too curiously inquire into the unpleasant circumstances which attended it.
Mr. James Martin succeeded Mr. Grosvenor. He said he had been long aware how much self-interest could pervert the judgment; but he was not apprised of the full power of it till the slave-trade became a subject of discussion. He had always conceived that the custom of trafficking in human beings had been incautiously begun, and without any reflection upon it; for he never could believe that any man, under the influence of moral principles, could suffer himself knowingly to carry on a trade replete with fraud, cruelty, and destruction; with destruction, indeed, of the worst kind, because it subjected the sufferers to a lingering death. But he found now that even such a trade as this could be sanctioned.
It was well observed in the petition from the university of Cambridge against the slave-trade, "that a firm belief in the providence of a benevolent Creator assured them that no system, founded on the oppression of one part of mankind, could be beneficial to another." He felt much concern, that in an assembly of the representatives of a country, boasting itself zealous, not only for the preservation of its own liberties, but for the general rights of mankind, it should be necessary to say a single word upon such a subject; but the deceitfulness of the human heart was such as to change the appearances of truth, when it stood in opposition to self-interest. And he had to lament that even among those whose public duty it was to cling to the universal and eternal principles of truth, justice, and humanity, there were found some who could defend that which was unjust, fraudulent and cruel.
The doctrines he had heard that evening, ought to have been reserved for times the most flagrantly profligate and abandoned. He never expected then to learn that the everlasting laws of righteousness were to give way to imaginary, political, and commercial expediency; and that thousands of our fellow-creatures were to be reduced to wretchedness, that individuals might enjoy opulence, or government a revenue.
This motion, he said, came strongly recommended to them. The honorable member who had introduced it, was justly esteemed for his character. He was ​the representative, too, of a noble county, which had been always ready to take the lead in every public measure for the good of the community, or for the general benefit of mankind; of a county, too, which had had the honor of producing a Saville. Had his illustrious predecessor been alive, he would have shown the same zeal on the same occasion. The preservation of the unalienable rights of all his fellow-creatures was one of the chief characteristics of that excellent citizen. Let every member in that house imitate him in the purity of their conduct and in the universal rectitude of their measures, and they would pay the same tender regard to the rights of other countries as to those of their own; and, for his part, he should never believe those persons to be sincere, who were loud in their professions of love of liberty, if he saw that love confined to the narrow circle of one community, which ought to be extended to the natural rights of every inhabitant of the globe.
But we should be better able to bring ourselves up to this standard of rectitude, if we were to put ourselves into the situation of those whom we oppressed. This was the rule of our religion. What should we think of those who should say that it was their-interest to injure us? But he hoped we should nut deceive ourselves so grossly as to imagine, that it was our real interest to oppress any one. The advantages to be obtained by tyranny were imaginary, and deceitful to the tyrant; and the evils they caused to the oppressed were grievous, and often insupportable.
Before he sat down, he would apologize, if he had expressed himself too warmly on this subject. He did not mean to offend any one. There were persons connected with the trade, some of whom he pitied on account of the difficulty of their situation. But he should think most contemptibly of himself as a man, if he could talk on this traffic without emotion. It would be a sign to him of his own moral degradation He regretted his inability to do justice to such a cause; but if, in having attempted to forward it, he had shown the weakness of his powers, he must console himself with the consideration that he felt more solid comfort in having acted up to sound public principles, than he could have done from the exertion of the most splendid talents against the conviction of his conscience.
Mr. Francis instanced an overseer, who, having thrown a negro into a copper of boiling cane-juice for a trifling offense, was punished merely by the loss of his place, and by being obliged to pay the value of the slave. He stated another instance of a girl of fourteen, who was dreadfully whipped for coining too late to her work. She fell down motionless after it, and was then dragged along the ground, by the legs, to a hospital, where she died. The murderer, though tried, was acquitted by a jury of his peers, upon the idea that it was impossible a master could destroy his own property. This was a notorious fact. It was published in the Jamaica Gazette; and it had even happened since the question of the abolition had been started.
Mr. Fox said that he would not believe that there could be found in the house of commons, men of such hard hearts and inaccessible understandings, as to vote an assent to the continuance of this detestable trade, and then go ​home to their families, satisfied with their vote, after they had been once made acquainted with the subject.
Mr. Matthew Montagu rose, and said a few words in support of the motion; and after condemning the trade in the strongest manner, he declared, that as long as he had life, he would use every faculty of his body and mind in endeavoring to promote its abolition.
Lord John Russell succeeded Mr Montagu. lie said that although slavery was repugnant to his feelings, he must vote against the abolition, as visionary and delusive. It was a feeble attempt without the power to serve the cause of humanity. Other nations would take up the trade. Whenever a bill of wise regulations should be brought forward, no man would be more ready than himself to lend his support. In this way the rights of humanity might be asserted without injury to others. He hoped he should not incur censure hy his vote; for, let his understanding be what it might, he did not know that he had, notwithstanding the assertions of Mr. Fox, an inaccessible heart.
Mr. William Smith remarked: That the slaves were exposed to great misery in the islands, was true as well from inference as from facts; for what might not be expected from the use of arbitrary power, where the three characters of party, judge, and executioner were united 1 The slaves, too, were more capable on account of their passions, than the beasts of the field, of exciting the passions of their tyrants. To what a length the ill treatment of them might be carried, might be learnt from the instance which General Tottenham mentioned to have seen in the year 1780, in the streets of Bridge Town, Barbadoes: "A youth about nineteen, (to use his own words in the evidence,) entirely naked, with an iron collar about his neck, having five long projecting spikes. His body, both before and behind, was covered with wounds. His belly and thighs were almost cut to pieces, with running ulcers all over them; and a finger might have been laid in some of the weals. He could not sit down, because his hinder part was mortified; and it was impossible for him to lie down, on account of the prongs of his collar." He supplicated the general for relief. The latter asked who had punished him so dreadfully? The youth answered his master had done it. And because he could not work, this same master, in the same spirit of perversion which extorts from scripture a justification of the slave-trade, had fulfilled the apostolic maxim, that he should have nothing to eat. The use he meant to make of this instance, was to show the unprotected state of the slaves. What must it be where such an instance could pass not only unpunished, but almost unregarded? If, in the streets of London, but a dog were to be seen lacerated like this miserable man, hew would the cruelty of the wretch be execrated, who had thus even abused a brute!
The judicial punishments also inflicted upon the negro showed the low estimation in which, in consequence of the strength of old customs and deep-rooted prejudices, they were held. Mr. Edwards, in his speech to the assembly at Jamaica, stated the following case, as one which had happened in one of the rebellions there. Some slaves had surrounded the dwelling-house of their mistress. She was in bed with a lovely infant. They deliberated upon the means ​of putting her to death in torment. But in the end one of them reserved her for his mistress; and they killed her infant with an axe before her face. "Now," says Mr. Edwards, (addressing himself to his audience,) "you will think that no torments were too great for such horrible excesses. Nevertheless, I am of a different opinion. I think that death, unaccompanied with cruelty, should be the utmost exertion of human authority over our unhappy fellow-creatures." Torments, however, were always inflicted in these cases. The punishment was gibbeting alive, and exposing the delinquents to perish by the gradual effects of hunger, thirst, and a parching sun; in which situation they were known to suffer for nine days, with a fortitude scarcely credible, never uttering a single groan. But horrible as the excesses might have been, which occasioned these punishments, it must be remembered that they were committed by ignorant savages, who had been dragged from all they held most dear; whose patience had been exhausted by a cruel and loathsome confinement during their trans- portation; and whose resentment had been wound up to the highest pitch of fury by the lash of the driver.
But he would now mention another instance, by way of contrast, out of the evidence. A child on board a slave-ship, of about ten months old, became sulky and would not eat. The captain flogged it with a cat, swearing that he would make it eat, or kill it. From this and other ill treatment the child's legs swelled. He then ordered some water to be made hot to abate the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel; for the cook, on putting his hand into the water, said it was too hot. Upon this the captain swore at him, and ordered the feet to be put in. This was done. The nails and skin came off. Oiled cloths were then put round them. The child was at length tied to a heavy log. Two or three days afterwards, the captain caught it up again, and repeated that he would make it eat, or kill it. He immediately flogged it again, and in a quarter of an hour it died. But, after the child was dead, whom should the barbarian select to throw it overboard but the wretched mother? In vain she started from the office. He beat her till he made her take up the child and carry it to the side of the vessel. She then dropped it into the sea, turning her head the other way that she might not see it.
Now it would naturally be asked, Was not this captain also gibbeted alive? Alas! although the execrable barbarity of the European exceeded that of the Africans before mentioned, almost as much as his opportunities of instruction had been greater than theirs, no notice whatsoever was taken of this horrible action; and a thousand similar cruelties had been committed in this abominable trade with equal impunity: but he would say no more. He should vote for the abolition, not only as it would do away all the evils complained of in Africa and the middle passage, but as it would be the most effectual means of ameliorating the condition of those unhappy persons who were still to continue slaves in the British colonies.
Mr. Courtenay entreated every member to recollect that on his vote that night depended the happiness of millions; and that it was then in his power to promote a measure of which the benefits would be felt over one whole ​quarter of the globe; that the seeds of civilization might, by the present bill, be sown all over Africa; and tin: first principles of humanity be established in regions where they had hitherto been excluded by the existence of this execrable trade.
Mr. Pitt rose and said that from the first hour of his having had the honor to sit in parliament down to the present, among all the questions, whether political or personal, in which it had been his fortune to take a share, there had never been one in which his heart was so deeply interested as in the present; both on account of the serious principles it involved, and the consequences connected with it.
The present was not a mere question of feeling. The argument which ought in his opinion to determine the committee, was, that the slave-trade was unjust. It was therefore such a trade as it was impossible for him to support, unless it could be first proved to him that there were no laws of morality binding upon nations; and that it was not the duty of a legislature to restrain its subjects from invading the happiness of other countries, and from violating the fundamental principles of justice.
Several had stated the impracticability of the measure before them. They wished to see the trade abolished; but there was some necessity for continuing in it which they conceived to exist. Nay, almost every one, he believed, appeared to wish that the further importation of slaves might cease, provided it could be made out that the population of the West Indies could be maintained without it. He proposed, therefore, to consider the latter point; for, as the impracticability of keeping up the population there appeared to operate as the chief objection, he trusted that, by showing it to be ill founded, he should clear away all other obstacles whatever; so that, having no ground either of justice or necessity to stand upon, there could be no excuse left to the committee for resisting the present motion.
He might reasonably, however, hope that they would not reckon any small or temporary disadvantage which might arise from the abolition to be a sufficient reason against it. It was surely not any slight degree of expediency, nor any small balance of profit, nor any light shades of probability on the one side, rather than on the other, which would determine them on this question. He asked pardon even for the supposition. The slave-trade was an evil of such magnitude that there must be a common wish in the committee at once to put an end to it, if there were no great and serious obstacles. It was a trade by which multitudes of unoffending nations were deprived of the blessings of civilization, and had their peace and happiness invaded. It ought, therefore, to be no common expediency, it ought to be nothing less than the utter ruin of our islands which it became those to plead who took upon them to defend the continuance of it.
He could not help thinking that the West India gentlemen had manifested an over great degree of sensibility as to the point in question; and that their alarms had been unreasonably excited upon it. He had examined the subject carefully for himself; and he would now detail those reasons which had ​induced him firmly to believe not only that no permanent mischief would follow from the abolition, but not even any such temporary inconvenience as could be stated to be a reason for preventing the house from agreeing to the motion before them; on the contrary, that the abolition itself would lay the foundation for the more solid improvement of all the various interests of those colonies.
In doing this, he should apply his observations chiefly to Jamaica, which contained more than half the slaves in the British West Indies; and if he should succeed in proving that no material detriment could arise to the population there, this would afford so strong a presumption with respect to the other islands, that the house could no longer hesitate whether they should or should not put a stop to this most horrid trade.
In the twenty years ending in 1788, the annual loss of slaves in Jamaica, (that is, the excess of deaths above the births,) appeared to be one in the hundred. In a preceding period the loss was greater; and, in a period before that, greater still; there having been a continual gradation in the decrease through the whole time. It might fairly be concluded, therefore, that (the average loss of the last period being one per cent.) the loss in the former part of it would be somewhat more, and in the latter part somewhat less than one per cent, insomuch that it might be fairly questioned whether, by this time, the births and deaths in Jamaica might not be stated as nearly equal. It was to be added that a peculiar calamity, which swept away fifteen thousand slaves, had occasioned a part of the mortality in the last mentioned period. The probable loss, therefore, now to be expected was very inconsiderable indeed.
There was, however, one circumstance to be added, which the West India gentlemen, in stating this matter, had entirely overlooked; and which was so material as clearly to reduce the probable diminution in the population of Jamaica down to nothing. In all the calculations he had referred to of the comparative number of births and deaths, all the negroes in the island were included. The newly imported, who died in the seasoning, made a part. But these swelled, most materially, the number of the deaths. Now as these extraordinary deaths would cease as soon as the importations ceased, a deduction of them ought to be made from his present calculation.
But the number of those who thus died in the seasoning would make up of itself nearly the whole of that one per cent, which had been stated. He particularly pressed an attention to this circumstance; for the complaint of being likely to want hands in Jamaica arose from the mistake of including the present unnatural deaths, caused by the seasoning, among the natural and perpetual causes cf mortality. These deaths, being erroneously taken into the calculations, gave the planters an idea that the numbers could not be kept up. These deaths, which were caused merely by the slave-trade, furnished the very ground, therefore, on which the continuance of that trade had been thought necessary.
The evidence as to this point was clear; for it would be found in that dreadful catalogue of deaths arising from the seasoning and the passage, which the house had been condemned to look into, that one half died. An annual ​mortality of two thousand slaves in Jamaica might be therefore charged to the importation; which, compared with the whole number on the island, hardly fell short of the whole one per cent, decrease.
Joining this with all the other considerations, he would then ask, could the decrease of the slaves in Jamaica be such; could the colonies be so destitute of means; could the planters, when, by their own accounts, they were establishing daily new regulations for the benefit of the slaves; could they, under all these circumstances, be permitted to plead the total impossibility of keeping up their number, which they had rested on, as being indeed the only possible pretext for allowing fresh importations from Africa? He appealed, therefore, to the sober judgment of all, whether the situation of Jamaica was such as to justify a hesitation in agreeing to the present motion.
It might be observed, also, that when the importations should stop, that disproportion between the sexes which was one of the obstacles to population, would gradually diminish, and a natural order of things be established. Through the want of this natural order, a thousand grievances were created, which it was impossible to define, and which it was in vain to think that, under such circumstances, we could cure. But the abolition of itself would work this desirable effect. The West Indians would then feel a near and urgent interest to enter into a thousand little details which it was impossible for him to describe, but which would have the greatest influence on population. A foundation would thus be laid for the general welfare of the islands; a new system would rise up, the reverse of the old; and eventually both their general wealth and happiness would increase.
He had now proved far more than he was bound to do; for, if he could only show that the abolition would not be ruinous, it would be enough, lie could give up, therefore, three arguments out of four, through the whole of what he had said, and yet have enough left for his position. As to the Creoles, they would undoubtedly increase. They differed in this entirely from the imported slaves, who were both a burthen and a curse to themselves and others. The measure now proposed would operate like a charm; and, besides stopping all the miseries in Africa and the passage, would produce even more benefit in the West Indies than legal regulations could effect.
He would now just touch upon the question of emancipation. A rash emancipation of the slaves would be mischievous. In that unhappy situation, to which our baneful conduct had brought ourselves and them, it would be no justice on either side to give them liberty. They were as yet incapable of it; but their situation might be gradually amended. They might be relieved from every thing harsh and severe; raised from their present degraded state, and put under the protection of the law. Till then, to talk of emancipation was insanity. But it was the system of fresh importations which interfered with these principles of improvement; and it was only the abolition which could establish them. The suggestion had its foundation in human nature. Wherever the incentive of honor, credit, and fair profit appeared, energy would spring ​up; and when these laborers should have the natural springs of human action afforded them, they would then rise to the natural level of human industry.
From Jamaica he would now go to the other islands. In Barbadoes the slaves had rather increased. In St. Kitts the decrease for fourteen years had been but three-fourths per cent., but here many of the observations would apply which he had used in the case of Jamaica. In Antigua many had died by a particular calamity. But for this, the decrease would have been trifling. In Nevis and Montserrat there was little or no disproportion of the sexes; so that it might well be hoped that the numbers would be kept up in these islands. In Dominica some controversy had arisen about the calculation; but Governor Orde had stated an increase of births above the deaths. From Grenada and St. Vincents no accurate accounts had been delivered in answer to the queries sent them; but they were probably not in circumstances less favorable than in the other islands.
On a full review, then, of the state of the negro population in the West Indies, was there any serious ground of alarm from the abolition of the slavetrade? Where was the impracticability on which alone so many had rested their objections? Must we not blush at pretending that it would distress our consciences to accede to this measure, as far as the question of the negro population was concerned?
Intolerable were the mischiefs of this trade, both in its origin and through every stage of its progress. To say that slaves could be furnished us by fair and commercial means was ridiculous. The trade sometimes ceased, as during the late war. The demand was more or less, according to circumstances. But how was it possible, that to a demand so exceedingly fluctuating, the supply should always exactly accommodate itself? Alas! we made human beings the subject of commerce; we talked of them as such; and yet we would not allow them the common principle of commerce, that the supply must accommodate itself to the consumption. It was not from wars, then, that the slaves were chiefly procured. They were obtained in proportion as they were wanted. If a demand for slaves arose, a supply was forced in one way or other; and it was in vain, overpowered as we then were with positive evidence, as well as the reasonableness of the supposition, to deny that by the slave-trade we occasioned all the enormities which had been alleged against it.
Mr. Fox again rose and observed, that some expressions which he had used had been complained of as too harsh and severe. He had since considered them; but he could not prevail upon himself to retract them; because, if any gentleman, after reading the evidence on the table, and attending to the debate, could avow himself au abettor of this shameful traffic in human flesh, it could only be either from some hardness of heart, or some difficulty of understanding, which he really knew not how to account for
Some had considered this question as a question of political, whereas it was a question of personal freedom. Political freedom was undoubtedly a great blessing; but, when it came to be compared with personal, it sunk to nothing To confound the two, served therefore to render all arguments on either ​perplexing and unintelligible. Personal freedom was the first right of every human being. It was a right, of which he who deprived a fellow-creature was absolutely criminal in BO depriving him, and which he who withheld was no less criminal in withholding, lie could not therefore retract his words with respect to any, who (whatever regard he might otherwise have for them) should, by their vote of that night, deprive their fellow-creatures of so great a blessing. Nay, he would go further. He would say, that if the house, knowing what the trade was by the evidence, did not by their vote mark to all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enormous, so repugnant to all laws, human and divine, they would consign their character to eternal infamy.
That the pretense of danger to our West Indian islands, from the abolition of the slave-trade, was totally unfounded, Mr. Wilberforce had abundantly proved: but if there were those who had not been satisfied with that proof, was it possible to resist the arguments of Mr. Pitt on the same subject? It had been shown, on a comparison of the births and deaths in Jamaica, that there was not now any decrease of the slaves. But if there had been, it would have made no difference to him in his vote; for, had the mortality been ever so great there, he should have ascribed it to the system of importing negroes, instead of that of encouraging their natural increase. Was it not evident that the planters thought it more convenient to buy them fit for work than to breed them? Why, then, was this horrid trade to be kept up? To give the planters, truly, the liberty of misusing their slaves, so as to check population: for it was from ill usage only that in a climate so natural to them, their numbers could diminish. The very ground, therefore, on which the planters rested the necessity of fresh importations, namely, the destruction of lives in the West Indies, was itself the strongest argument that could be given, and furnished the most imperious call upon parliament for the abolition of the trade.
Against this trade innumerable were the charges. An honorable member, Mr. Smith, had done well to introduce those tragical stories, which had made such an impression upon the house. No one of these had been yet controverted. It had indeed been said that the cruelty of the African captain to the child was too bad to be true; and we had been desired to look at the cross-examination of the witness, as if we should find traces of the falsehood of his testimony there. But his cross-examination was peculiarly honorable to his character; for after he had been pressed, in the closest manner, by some able members of the house, the only inconsistency they could fix upon him was, whether the fact had happened on the same day of the same month of the year 1164, or the year 1765.
But it was idle to talk of the incredibility of such instances. It was not denied that absolute power was exercised by the slave captains; and if this was granted, all the cruelties charged upon them would naturally follow. Never did he hear of charges so black and horrible as those contained in the evidence on the table. They unfolded such a scene of cruelty, that if the house, with all their present knowledge of the circumstances, should dare to vote for its ​continuance, they must have nerves of which he had no conception. We might find instances, indeed, in history, of men violating the feelings of nature on extraordinary occasions. Fathers had sacrificed their sons and daughters, and husbands their wives; but to imitate their characters, we ought to have not only nerves as strong as the two Brutuses, but to take care that we hnd a cause as good; or that we had motives for such a dereliction of our feelings as patriotic as those which historians had attributed to these when they handed them to the notice of the world.
But what was our motive in the case before us, to continue a trade which was a wholesale sacrifice of a whole order and race of our fellow-creatures? which carried them away by force from their native country, in order to subject them to the mere will and caprice, the tyranny and oppression of other human beings, for their whole natural lives, them and their posterity for ever! O most monstrous wickedness 1 unparalleled barbarity! And, what was more aggravating, this most complicated scene of robbery and murder which mankind had ever witnessed, had been honored by the name of trade.
That a number of human beings should be at all times ready to be furnished as fair articles of commerce, just as our occasions might require, was absurd. The argument of Mr. Pitt, on this head, was unanswerable. Our demand was fluctuating; it entirely ceased at some times; at others it was great and pressing. How was it possible, on every sudden call, to furnish a sufficient return in slaves without resorting to those execrable means of obtaining them which were stated in the evidence? These were of three sorts, and he would now examine them.
Captives in war, it was urged, were consigned either to death or slavery. This, however, he believed to be false in point of fact. But suppose it were true; did it not become us, with whom it was a custom, founded in the wisest policy, to pay the captives a peculiar respect and civility, to inculcate the same principles in Africa? But we were so far from doing this, that we encouraged wars for the sake of taking, not men's goods and possessions, but men themselves; and it was not the war which was the cause of the slave-trade, but the slave-trade which was the cause of the war. It was the practice of the slave-merchants to try to intoxicate the African kings in order to turn them to their purpose. A particular instance occurred in the evidence of a prince, who, when sober, resisted their wishes; but in the moment of inebriety, he gave the word for war, attacked the next village, and sold the inhabitants to the merchants.
The second mode was kidnapping. He referred the house to various instances of this in the evidence: but there was one in particular, from which we might immediately infer the frequency of the practice. A black trader had kidnapped a girl and sold her; but he was presently afterwards kidnapped and sold himself; and, when he asked the captain who bought him, "What! do you buy me, who am a great trader?" the only answer was, "Yes, I will buy you, or her, or any body else, provided any one will sell you;" and accordingly both the trader and the girl were carried to the West Indies and sold for slaves. ​The third mode of obtaining slaves was by crimes committed or imputed. One of these was adultery. But was Africa the place, where Englishmen, above all others, were to go to find out and punish adulterers? Did it become us to cast the first stone? It was a most extraordinary pilgrimage for a most extraordinary purpose 1 And yet upon this plea we justified our right of carrying off its inhabitants. The offense alleged next was witchcraft. What a reproach it was to lend ourselves to this superstition! Yes: we stood by; we heard the trial; we knew the crime to be impossible, and that the accused must be innocent: but we waited in patient silence for his condemnation; and then we lent our friendly aid to the police of the country, by buying the wretched convict, with all his family, whom, for the benefit of Africa, we carried away, also, into perpetual slavery.
Of the slaves in the West Indies it had been said that they were taken from a worse state to a better. An honorable member, Mr. William Smith, had quoted some instances out of the evidence to the contrary. He also would quote one or two others. A slave under hard usage had run away. To prevent a repetition of the offense his owner sent for his surgeon, and desired him to cut off the man's leg. The surgeon refused. The owner, to render it a matter of duty in the surgeon, broke it. "Now," says he, "you must cut it off, or the man will die." We might console ourselves, perhaps, that this happened in a French island; but he would select another instance which had happened in one of our own. Mr. Ross heard the shrieks of a female issuing from an out-house, and so piercing that he determined to see what was going on. On looking in he perceived a young female tied up to a beam by her wrists, entirely naked, and in the act of involuntary writhing and swinging, while the author of her torture was standing below her with a lighted torch in his hand, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he knew not; but the human mind could not conceive a crime warranting such a punishment.
He was glad to see that these tales affected the house. Would they then sanction enormities, the bare recital of which made them shudder? Let them remember that humanity did not consist in a squeamish ear. It did not consist in shrinking and starting at such tales as these; but in a disposition of the heart to remedy the evils they unfolded. Humanity belonged rather to the mind than to the nerves. But if so, it should prompt men to charitable exertion. Such exertion was necessary in the present case. It was necessary for the credit of our jurisprudence at home and our character abroad. For what would any man think of our justice who should see another hanged for a crime which would be innocence itself, if compared with those enormities which were allowed in Africa and the West Indies under the sanction of the British parliament.
With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was pride only which suggested a difference between them and ourselves. There was a remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which he would quote. In one of the slave-ships was a person of consequence, a man once high in ​a military station, and with a mind not insensible to the eminence of his rank. He had been taken captive and sold, and was then in the hold, confined promiscuously with the rest. Happening in the night to fall asleep, he dreamed that he was in his own country, high in honor and command, caressed by his family and friends, waited on by his domestics, and surrounded with all his former comforts in life. But awaking suddenly and finding where he was, he was heard to burst into the loudest groans and lamentations on the miserable contrast of his present state, mixed with the meanest of his subjects, and subjected to the insolence of wretches a thousand times lower than himself in every kind of endowment. He appealed to the house, whether this was not as moving a picture of the miserable effects of the slave-trade as could be well imagined. There was one way by which they might judge of it. Let them make the case their own. This was the Christian rule of judging; and having mentioned Christianity, he was sorry to find that any should suppose that it had given countenance to such a system of oppression. So far was this from being the case, that he thought it one of the most splendid triumphs of this religion, that it had caused slavery to be so generally abolished on its appearance in the world. It had done this by teaching us, among other beautiful precepts, that in the sight of their Maker, all mankind were equal. Its influence appeared to have been more powerful in this respect than that of all the ancient systems of philosophy; though even in these, in point of theory, we might trace great liberality and consideration for human rights. Where could be found finer sentiments of liberty than in Demosthenes and Cicero? Where bolder assertions of the rights of mankind than in Tacitus and Thucydides? But alas! these were the holders of slaves 1 It was not so with those who had been converted to Christianity.
He would now conclude by declaring that the whole country, indeed the whole civilized world, must rejoice that such a bill as the present had been moved for, not merely as a matter of humanity, but as an act of justice; for he would put humanity out of the case. Could it be called humanity to forbear from committing murder? Exactly upon this ground did the present motion stand, being strictly a question of national justice. He thanked Mr. Wilberforce for having pledged himself so strongly to pursue his object till it was accomplished; and, as for himself, he declared, that in whatever situation he might ever be, he would use his warmest efforts for the promotion of this righteous cause.
Mr. Stanley (the member for Lancashire) rose, and declared that when he came into the house, he intended to vote against the abolition; but that the impression made both on his feelings and on his understanding was such, that he could not persist in his resolution. He was now convinced that the entire abolition of the slave-trade was called for equally by sound policy and justice He thought it right and fair to avow manfully this change in his opinion. The abolition, he was sure, could not long fail of being carried. The arguments for it were irresistible.
Air. Smith (member for Pontefract) said that he should not trouble the house at so late an hour further than to enter his protest, in the most solemn manner, against this trade, which he considered as most disgraceful to the country, and contrary to all tho principles of justice and religion.
Air. Burke said he would use but few words. He declared that he had for long time had his mind drawn toward this great subject. He had even prepared a bill for the regulation of the trade, conceiving at that time that the immediate abolition of it was a thing hardly to be hoped for; but when he found that Air. Wilberforce had seriously undertaken the work, and that his motion was for the abolition, which he approved much more than his own, he had burnt his papers, and made an offering of them in honor of his nobler proposition, much in the same manner as we read that the curious books were offered up and burnt at the approach of the Gospel. He highly applauded the confessions of Mr. Stanley and Mr. Ryder. It would be a glorious tale for them to tell their constituents, that it was impossible for them, however prejudiced, if sent to hear discussion in that house, to avoid surrendering up their hearts-and judgments at the shrine of reason.
Mr. Wilberforce made a short reply to some arguments in the course of the debate; after which, at half-past three in the morning, the house divided. There appeared for Mr. Wilberforce's motion eighty-eight, and against it one hundred and sixty-three; so that it was lost by a majority of seventy-five votes.
Upon the news of this defeat the friends of the cause held a meeting. They passed a vote of thanks to the illustrious minority which had stood forth in the house of commons as the assertors of British justice and humanity; and they resolved not to desist from appealing to their countrymen until the commercial intercourse with Africa should cease to be polluted with the blood of its inhabitants. Mr. Clarkson made an abridgment of the evidence before the house of commons, which was circulated through the kingdom. Great numbers of people left off the use of articles produced by slave labor, and vented their feelings in public meetings to address parliament on the subject; and this they did with so much earnestness and activity, that by the latter end of March, in 1792, no less than 511 petitions were laid on the table of the commons, praying for the total abolition of the slave-trade. Emboldened and supported by the people, Mr. Wilberforce again introduced the question on the 2d of April, 1192, and after a speech of four hours, moved "that it is the opinion of this house that the African slave-trade ought to be abolished." This led to a long and interesting debate. Never in the house of commons was so much splendid oratory displayed as on that night. We extract from the parliamentary records a report of some of the speeches made on that occasion.
Mr. Wilberforce opened the debate in a luminous and impressive speech. After remarking at considerable length upon the evils and the injuries of the ​slave-trade, lie touched upon the argument so often repeated, that other nations would carry on the slave-trade if we abandoned it. But how did we know this? Had not Denmark given a noble example to the contrary? She had consented to abolish the trade in ten years; and had she not done this, even though we, after an investigation of nearly five years, had ourselves hung back? But what might not be expected if we were to take up the cause in earnest; if we were to proclaim to all nations the injustice of the trade, and to solicit their concurrence in the abolition of it 1 He hoped the representatives of the nation would not be less just than the people. The latter had stepped forward and expressed their sense more generally by petitions than in any instance in which they had ever before interfered. To see this great cause thus triumphing over distinctions and prejudices was a noble spectacle, Whatever might be said of our political divisions, such a sight had taught us that there were subjects still beyond the reach of party; that there was a point of elevation where we ascended above the jarring of the discordant elements which ruffled and agitated the vale below. In our ordinary atmosphere, clouds and vapors obscured the air, and we were the sport of a thousand conflicting winds and adverse currents; but here we moved in a higher region, where all was pure and clear, and free from perturbation and discomposure.
"As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm: Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
Here, then, on this august eminence, he hoped we should build the temple of benevolence; but we should lay its foundation deep in truth and justice; and that we should inscribe upon its gates, "Peace and good will to men." Here we should offer the first fruits of our benevolence, and endeavor to compensate, if possible, for the injuries we had brought upon our fellow-men.
He would only observe that his conviction of the indispensable necessity of immediately abolishing this trade remained as strong as ever. Let those who talk of allowing three or four years to the continuance of it, reflect on the disgraceful scenes which had passed last year As for himself, he would wash his hands of the blood which would be spilled in this horrid interval. He could not, however, but believe that the hour was come when we should put a final period to the existence of this cruel traffic. Should he unhappily be mistaken, he would never desert the cause; but to the last moment of his life he would exert his utmost powers in its support. He would now move, "That it is the opinion of this committee that the trade carried on by British subjects, for the purpose of obtaining slaves on the coast of Africa, ought to be abolished."
Mr. Bailie was in hopes that the friends of the abolition would have been contented with the innocent blood which had been already shed. The great island of St. Domingo had been torn to pieces by insurrections. The most dreadful barbarities had been perpetrated there. In the year 1789, the imports into it exceeded five millions sterling. The exports from it in the same vear amounted to six millions; and the trade employed three hundred ​thousand tons of shipping, and thirty thousand seamen. This fine island, thus advantageously situated, had been lost in consequence of the agitation of the question of the slave-trade. Surely, so much mischief ought to have satisfied those who supported it; but they required the total destruction of all the West Indian colonies belonging to Great Britain to complete the ruin.
The honorable gentleman who had just spoken, had dwelt upon the enormities of the slave-trade. lie was far from denying that many acts of inhumanity might accompany it; but as human nature was much the same every where, it would be unreasonable to expect, among African traders, or the inhabitants of our islands, a degree of perfection in morals which was not to be found in Great Britain itself. Would any man estimate the character of the English nation by what was to be read in the records of the Old Bailey? He himself, however, had lived sixteen years in the West Indies, and he could bear testimony to the general good usage of the slaves.
Before the agitation of this impolitic question, the slaves were contented with their situation. There was a mutual confidence between them and their masters: and this continued to be the case till the new doctrines were broached. But now depots of arms were necessary on every estate, and the scene was totally reversed. Nor was their religious then inferior to their civil state. When the English took possession of Grenada, where his property lay, they found them baptized and instructed in the principles of the Roman Catholic faith. The priests of that persuasion had indeed been indefatigable in their vocation; so that imported Africans generally obtained within twelve months a tolerable idea of their religious duties. He had seen the slaves there go through the public mass in a manner, and with a fervency, which would have done credit to more civilized societies. But the case was now altered; for, except where the Moravians had been, there was no trace in our islands of an attention to their religious interests.
It had been said that their punishments were severe. There might be instances of cruelty, but these were not general. Many of them were undoubtedly ill disposed; though not more, according to their number on a plantation, than in a regiment, or in a ship's crew. Had we never heard of seamen being flogged from ship to ship, or of soldiers dying in the very act of punishment? Had we not also heard, even in this country of boasted liberty of seamen being seized, and carried away, when returning from distant voyages, after an absence of many years; and this without even being allowed to see their wives aud families? As to distressed objects, he maintained that there was more wretchedness and poverty in St. Giles than in all the West Indian islands belonging to Great Britain.
He would now speak of the African and West Indian trades. The imports and exports of these amounted to upwards of ten millions annually; and they gave employment to three hundred thousand tons of shipping, and to about twenty-five thousand seamen. These trades had been sanctioned by our ancestors in parliament. The acts for this purpose might be classed under three heads. First, they were such as declared the colonies and the trade thereof ​advantageous to Great Britain, and therefore entitled to her protection. Secondly, such as authorized, protected and encouraged the trade of Africa, an advantageous in itself, and necessary to the welfare and existence of the sugar colonies; and, thirdly, such as promoted and secured loans of money to the proprietors of the said colonies, either from British subjects or from foreigners. These acts, he apprehended, ought to satisfy every person of the legality and usefulness of these trades. They were enacted in reigns distinguished for the production of great and enlightened characters. We heard then of no wild and destructive doctrines like the present. These were reserved for this age of novelty and innovation. But he must remind the house that the inhabitants of our islands had as good a right to the protection of their property as the inhabitants of Great Britain. Nor could it be diminished in any shape without full compensation. The proprietors of lands in the ceded islands, which were purchased of government under specific conditions of settlement, ought to be indemnified. They, also, (of whom he was one,) who had purchased the territory granted by the crown to General Monkton in the island of St. Vincent, ought to be indemnified also. The sale of this had gone on briskly, till it was known that a plan was in agitation for the abolition of the slave-trade. Since that period the original purchasers had done little or nothing, and they had many hundred acres on hand which would be of no value if the present question was carried. In fact, they had a right to compensation. The planters generally spent their estates in this country. They generally educated their children in it. They had never been found seditious or rebellious; and they demanded of the parliament of Great Britain that protection which, upon the principles of good faith, it was in duty bound to afford them in common with the rest of his majesty's loyal subjects.
Mr. Henry Thornton remarked, that the manner of procuring slaves in Africa was the great evil to be remedied. Africa was to be stripped of its inhabitants to supply a population for the West Indies. There was a Dutch proverb which said, "My son, get money, honestly if you can; but get money;" or, in other words, "Get slaves, honestly if you can; but get slaves." This was the real grievance; and the two honorable gentlemen, by confining their observations to the West Indies, had entirely overlooked it.
Though this evil had been fully proved, he could not avoid stating to the house some new facts, which had come to his knowledge as a director of the Sierra Leone company, and which would still further establish it. The consideration that they had taken place since the discussion of the last year on this subject, obliged him to relate them.
Mr. Falconbridge, agent to the company, sitting one evening in Sierra Leone, heard a shout, and immediately afterwards the report of a gun. Fearing an attack, he armed forty of the settlers, and rushed with them to the place from whence the noise came. He found a poor wretch, who had been crossing from a neighboring village, in the possession of a party of kidnappers, who were tying his hands. Mr. Falconbridge, however, dared not rescue him, lest, in the defenseless state of his own town, retaliation might be made upon him. ​At another time a young woman, living half a mile off, was sold, without Any criminal charge, to one of the slave-ships. She was well acquainted with the agent's wife, and had been with her only the day before. Her cries were heard, but it was impossible to relieve her.
At another time a young lad, one of the free settlers who went from England, was caught by a neighboring chief, as he was straggling alone from home, and sold for a slave. The pretext was, that some one in the town of Sierra Leone had committed an offense. Hence, the first person belonging to it, who could be seized, was to be punished. Happily, the free settlers saw him in his chains, and they recovered him before he was conveyed to the ship.
To mark still more forcibly the scenes of misery to which the slave-trade gave birth, he would mention a case stated to him in a letter by king Naimbanna. It had happened to this respectable person, in no less than three instances, to have some branches of his family kidnapped, and carried off to the "West Indies. At one time three young men, Corpro, Banna, and Marbrour, were decoyed on board a Danish slave-ship, under pretense of buying something, and were taken away. At another time another relation piloted a vessel down the river He begged to be put on shore, when he came opposite to his own town, but he was pressed to pilot her to the river's mouth. The captain then pleaded the impracticability of putting him on shore, carried him to Jamaica, and sold him for a slave. Fortunately, however, by means of a letter which was conveyed there, the man, by the assistance of the governor, was sent back to Sierra Leone. At another time another relation was also kidnapped. But he had not the good fortune, like the former, to return.
He would mention one other instance. A son had sold his own father, for whom he obtained a considerable price; for, as the father was rich in domestic slaves, it was not doubted that he would offer largely for his ransom. The old man accordingly gave twenty-two of these in exchange for himself. The rest, however, being from that time filled with apprehensions of being, on some ground or other, sold to the slave-ships, fled to the mountains of Sierra Leone, where they now dragged on a miserable existence. The son himself was sold, in his turn, soon after. In short, the whole of that unhappy peninsula, as he learned from eye witnesses, had been desolated by the trade in slaves. Towns were seen standing without inhabitants all over the coast; in several of which the agent of the company had been. There was nothing but distrust among the inhabitants. Every one, if he stirred from home, felt himself obliged to be armed.
Such was the nature of the slave-trade. It had unfortunately obtained the name of a trade, and many had been deceived by the appellation. But it was war and not trade. It was a mass of crimes, and not commerce. It was that which prevented the introduction of a trade in Africa; for it was only by clearing and cultivating the lands, that the climate could be made healthy for settlements; but this wicked traffic, by dispersing the inhabitants, and causing the lands to remain uncultivated, made the coast unhealthy to Europeans. He had found, in attempting to establish a colony there, that it was an obstacle ​which opposed itself to him in innumerable ways; it created more embarrassments than all the natural impediments of the country; and it was more hard to contend with, than any difficulties of climate, soil, or natural disposition of the people.
Colonel Tarleton repeated his arguments of the last year. In addition to these, he inveighed bitterly against the abolitionists, as a junto of sectaries, sophists, enthusiasts, and fanatics. He condemned the abolition as useless, unless other nations would take it up. He brought to the recollection of the house the barbarous scenes which had taken place in St. Domingo, all of which, he said, had originated in the discussion of this question. He described the alarms in which the inhabitants of the islands were kept, lest similar scenes should occur from the same cause. He ridiculed the petitions on the table. Itinerant clergymen, mendicant physicians, and others had extorted signatures from the sick, the indigent and the traveler. School-boys were invited to sign them, under the promise of a holiday. He had letters to produce which would prove all these things, though he was not authorized to give up the names of those who had written them.
Mr. Whitbread said, that even if he could conceive that the trade was, as some had asserted it to be, founded on principles of humanity; that the A Means were rescued from death in their own country; that, upon being carried to the West Indies, they were put under kind masters; that their labor there was easy; that at evening they returned cheerful to their homes; that in sickness they were attended with care; and that their old age was rendered comfortable; even then he would vote for the abolition of the slave-trade, inasmuch as he was convinced that that which was fundamentally wrong, no practice could justify.
No eloquence could persuade him that the Africans were torn from their country and their dearest connexions, merely that they might live a happier life; or that they could be placed under the uncontrolled dominion of others without suffering. Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best. Hence would arise tyranny on the one side, and a sense of injury on the other. Hence the passions would be let loose, and a state of perpetual enmity would follow.
He needed only to go to the accounts of those who defended the system of slavery, to show that it was cruel. He was forcibly struck last year by an expression of an honorable member, an advocate for the trade, who, when he came to speak of the slaves, on selling off the stock of a plantation, said that they brought less than the common price, because they were damaged. Damaged! What 1 were they goods and chattels? What an idea was this to hold out of our fellow-creatures 1 We might imagine how slaves were treated, if they could be spoken of in such a manner. Perhaps these unhappy people had lingered out the best part of their lives in the service of their master. Able then to do but little, they were sold for little; and the remaining substance of their sinews was to be pressed out by another, yet more hardened than the former, who had made a calculation of their vitals accordingly.
Mr. Dundas declared that he had always been a warm friend to the abolition ​of the slave-trade, though he differed with Mr. Wilberforce as to the mode of effecting it.
The abolitionists, and those on the opposite side of the question, had, both of them, gone into extremes. The former were for the immediate and abrupt annihilation of the trade. The latter considered it as essentially necessary to the existence of the West Indian islands, and therefore laid it down that it was to be continued forever. Such was the vast distance between the parties.
He would say that he agreed with his honorable friend, Mr. Wilberforce, in very material points He believed the trade was not founded in policy; that the continuation of it was not essential to the preservation of our trade with the West Indian islands; and that the slaves were not only to be maintained, but increased there by natural population. He agreed, too, as to the propriety of the abolition. But when his honorable friend talked of direct and abrupt abolition, he would submit it to him, whether he did not run counter to the prejudices of those who were most deeply interested in the question; and whether, if he could obtain his object without wounding these, it would not be Detter to do it? Did he not also forget the sacred attention which parliament had ever shown to the private interests and patrimonial rights of individuals?
Mr. Addington (the speaker) professed himself to be one of those moderate persons alluded to by Mr. Dundas. He wished to see some middle measure suggested. The fear of doing injury to the property of others had hitherto prevented him from giving an opinion against the system, the continuance of which he could not countenance.
Mr. Fox said that after what had fallen from the two last speakers, he could remain no longer silent. Something so mischievous had come out, and something so like a foundation had been laid for preserving, not only for years to come, but forever, this detestable traffic, that he should feel himself wanting in his duty, if ho were not to deprecate all such deceptions and delusions upon the country.
The honorable gentlemen had called themselves moderate men; but upon this subject he neither felt, nor desired to feel, anything like a sentiment of moderation. Their speeches had reminded him of a passage in Middleton's Life of Cicero. The translation of it was defective, though it would equally suit his purpose. He says: "To enter into a man's house and kill him, his wife and family, in the night, is certainly a most heinous crime, and deserving of death; but to break open his house, to murder him, his wife, and all his children, in the night, may be still right, provided it be done with moderation." Now, was there any thing more absurd in this passage, than to say that the slave-trade might be earned on with moderation; for, if yon could not rob or murder a single man with moderation, with what moderation could you pillage and wound a whole nation? In fact, the question of the abolition was simply a question of justice. It was only whether we should authorize by law, respecting Africa, the commission of crimes for which, in this country, we should forfeit our lives; notwithstanding which, it was to be treated, in the opinion of these honorable gentlemen, with moderation. ​Upon the whole, he would give his opinion of this traffic in a few words. He believed it to be impolitic, he knew it to be inhuman; he was certjan it was unjust; he thought it so inhuman and unjust that if the colonies could not be cultivated without it, they ought not to be cultivated at all. It would be much better for us to be without them, than not to abolish the slave-trade. He hoped therefore that the members would this night act the part which would do them honor. He declared, that whether he should vote in a large minority or a small one, he would never give up the cause. Whether in the house of parliament or out of it, in whatever situation he might ever be, as long as he had a voice to speak, this question should never be at rest. Believing the trade to be of the nature of crimes and pollutions, which stained the honor of the country, he would never relax his efforts. It was his duty to prevent man from preying upon man; and if he and his friends should die before they had attained their glorious object, he hoped there would never be wanting men alive to their duty, who would continue to labor till the evil should be wholly done away. If the situation of the Africans was as happy as servitude could make them, he could not consent to the enormous crime of selling man to man, nor permit a practice to continue, which put an entire bar to the civilization of one quarter of the globe. He was sure that the nation would not much longer allow the continuance of enormities which shocked human nature. The West Indies had no right to demand that crimes should be permitted by this country for their advantage; and if they were wise, they would lend their cordial assistance to such measures as would bring about in the shortest possible time the abolition of this execrable trade.
Mr. Jenkinson admitted that the slave-trade was an evil. He admitted also that the state of slavery was an evil; if the question was, not whether we should abolish, but whether we should establish these, he would be the first to oppose himself to their existence; but there were many evils which we should have thought it our duty to prevent, yet which, when they had once arisen, it was more dangerous to oppose than to submit to. The duty of a statesman was, not to consider abstractedly what was right or wrong, but to weigh the consequences which were likely to result from the abolition of an evil, against those which were likely to result from its continuance. Agreeing then most perfectly with the abolitionists in their end, he differed from them only in the means of accomplishing it. He was desirous of doing that gradually, which he conceived they were doing rashly. He had therefore drawn up two propositions. The first was, that an address be presented to his majesty, that he would recommend to the colonial assemblies to grant premiums to such planters and overseers as should distinguish themselves by promoting the annual increase of the slaves by birth; and likewise freedom to every female slave, who had reared five children to the age of seven years. The second was, that a bounty of five pounds per head be given to the master of every slave-ship, who should import in any cargo a greater number of lemales than males, not exceeding the age of twenty-five years. To bring for ​ward these propositions, he would now move that the chairman leave the chair.
Mr. Pitt rejoiced that the debate had taken a turn which contracted the question into such narrow limits. The matter then in dispute was merely as to the time at which the abolition should take place. He therefore congratulated the house, the country, and the world, that this great point had been gained; that we might now consider this trade as having received its condemnation; that this curse of mankind was seen in its true light; and that the greatest stigma on our national character, which ever yet existed, was about to be removed! Mankind, he trusted, were now likely to be delivered from the greatest practical evil that ever afflicted the human race; from the most severe and extensive calamity recorded in the history of the world.
Mr. Pitt proceeded to remark upon the civilization of Africa; as his eye had just glared upon a West Indian law, in the evidence upon the table, he said he would begin with an argument, which the sight of it had suggested to him. This argument had been ably answered in the course of the evening; but he would view it in yet another light. It had heen said that the savage disposition of the Africans rendered the prospect of their civilization almost hopeless. This argument was indeed of long standing; but last year it had been supported upon a new ground. Captain Frazer had stated in his evidence that a boy had been put to death at Cabenda, because there were those who refused to purchase him as a slave. This single story was deemed by him, and had been considered by others, as a sufficient proof of the barbarity of the Africans, and of the inutility of abolishing the slave-trade. But they, who had used this fact, had suppressed several circumstances relating to it. It appeared, on questioning Captain Frazer afterwards, that this boy had previously run away from his master three several times; that the master had to pay his value, according to the custom of the country, every time he was brought back; and that partly from anger at the boy for running away so frequently, and partly to prevent a repetition of the same expense, he determined to destory him. Such was the explanation of the signal instance which was to fix barbarity on all Africa, as it came out in the cross-examination of Captain Frazer. That this African master was unenlightened and barbarous, he freely admitted; but what would an enlightened and civilized West Indian have done in a similar case? He would quote the law, passed in the West Indies in 1722, which he had just cast his eye upon in the book of evidence, by which law this very same crime of running away was by the legislature of an island, by the grave and deliberate sentence of an enlightened legislature, punished with death; and this, not in the case only of the third offense, but even in the very first instance. It was enacted, "That if any negro or other slave should withdraw himself from his master for the term of six months, or any slave, who was absent, should not return within that time, every such person should suffer death." There was also another West Indian law, by which every negro was armed against his fellow-negro, for he was authorized to kill every runaway slave; and he had even a reward held out to him for so doing. ​Let the house now contrast the two cases. Let them ask themselves which of the two exhibited the greatest barbarity; and whether they could possibly vote for the continuance of the slave-trade, upon the principle that the Africans had shown themselves to be a race of incorrigible barbarians!
Something like an opposite argument, but with a like view, had been maintained by others on this subject. It had been said, in justification of the trade, that the Africans had derived some little civilization from their intercourse with us. Yes, we had given them just enough of the forms of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials to their other modes of perpetrating the most atrocious crimes. We had given them just enough of European improvements to enable them the more effectually to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. Alas! alas! we had carried on a trade with them from this civilized and enlightened country, which, instead of diffusing knowledge, had been a check to every laudable pursuit. We had carried a poison Into their country which spread its contagious effects from one end of it to the other, and which penetrated to its very centre, corrupting every part to which it reached. We had there subverted the whole order of nature; we had 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 neighbor. 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, misguided in our policy, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done to that continent! How shall we hope to obtain forgiveness from heaven if we refused to use those means which the mercy of Providence had still reserved to us for wiping away the guilt and shame with which we were now covered? If we refused even this degree of compensation, how aggravated would be our guilt! Should we delay, then, to repair these incalculable injuries? We ought to count the days, nay, the very hours which intervened to delay the accomplishment of such a work.
On this great subject, the civilization of Africa, which, he confessed, was near his heart, he would yet add a few observations. And first he would say, that the present deplorable state of the country, especially when he reflected that her chief calamities were to be ascribed to us, called for a generous aid, rather than justified any despair, on our part, of her recovery, and still less a repetition of our injuries. On what ground of theory or history did we act, when we supposed that she was never to be reclaimed? There was a time, which it now might be fit to call to remembrance, when human sacrifices, and even this very practice of the slave-trade, existed in our own island. Slaves, as we may read in Henry's history of Great Britain, were formerly an established article of our exports. "Great numbers," he says, "were exported, like cattle, from the British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the Roman market." "Adultery, witchcraft, and debt," says the same historian, "were probably some of the chief sources of supplying the Roman market with British slaves; prisoners taken in war were added to the number; there might be also among them some unfortunate gamesters, who, after having lost all their ​goods, at length staked themselves, their wives, and their children." Now every one of these sources of slavery had been stated to be at this hour a source of slavery in Africa. If these practices, therefore, were to be admitted as proofs of the natural incapacity of its inhabitants, why might they not bare been applied to ancient Britain? Why might not then some Roman senator, pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, that these were a people who were destined never to be free; who were without the understanding necessary for the attainment of useful arts; depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, and created to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the world? But happily, since that time, notwithstanding what would then have been the justness of these predictions, we had emerged from barbarism. We were now raised to a situation which exhibited a striking contrast to every circumstance by which a Roman might have characterized us, and by which we now characterized Africa. There was, indeed, one thing wanting to complete the contrast, and to clear us altogether from the imputation of acting even to this hour as barbarians; for we continued to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves. We continued it even yet, in spite of all our great pretensions. We were once as obscure among the nations of the earth, as savage in our manners, as debased in our morals, as degraded in our understandings as these unhappy Africans. But in the lapse of a long scries of years, by a progression slow, and for a time almost imperceptible, we had become rich in a variety of acquirements. We were favored above measure in the gifts of Providence, we were unrivaled in commerce, preeminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we were in thft possession of peace, of liberty, and of happiness; we were under the guidance of a mild and a beneficent religion; and we were protected by impartial laws, and the purest administration of justice; we were living under a system of government, which our own happy experience led us to pronounce the best and wisest, and which had become the admiration of the world. From all these blessings we must forever have been excluded had there been any truth in those principles which some had not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa; and we should have been, at this moment, little superior, either in morals, knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of that continent.
If, then, we felt that this perpetual confinement in the fetters of brutal ignorance would have been the greatest calamity which could have befallen us; if we viewed with gratitude the contrast between our present and our former situation; if we shuddered to think of the misery which would still have overwhelmed us, had our country continued to the present times, through some cruel policy, to be the mart for slaves to the more civilized nations of the world; God forbid that we should any longer subject Africa to the same dreadful scourge, and exclude that light of knowledge from her coasts which had reached every other quarter of the globe!
He trusted we should no longer continue this commerce; and that we should no longer consider ourselves as conferring too great a boon on the natives of ​Africa, in restoring them to the rank of human beings. He trusted we should not think ourselves too liberal, if, by abolishing the slave-trade, we gave them the same common chance of civilization with other parts of the world. If we listened to the voice of reason and duty this night, some of us might live to see a reverse of that picture, from which we now turn our eyes with shame. We might live to behold the natives engaged in the calm occupations of industry, and in the pursuit of a just commerce. We might behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon their land, which at some happy period in some later times might blaze with full lustre; and joining their influence to that of pure religion, might illuminate and invigorate the most distant extremities of that immense continent. Then might we hope that even Africa, though last of all the quarters of the globe, should enjoy at length, in the evening of her days, those blessings which had descended so plentifully upon us in a much earlier period of the world. Then also would Europe, participating in her improvement and prosperity, receive an ample recompense for the tardy kindness (if kindness it could be called) of no longer hindering her from extricating herself out of the darkness, which, in other more fortunate regions, had been so much more speedily dispelled.
It was in this view, it was as an atonement for our long and cruel injustice towards Africa that the measure proposed by his honorable friend, Mr. Wilberforce, most forcibly recommended itself to his mind. The great and happy change to be expected in the state of her inhabitants was, of all the various benefits of the abolition, in his estimation the most extensive and important. He should vote against the adjournment, and he should also oppose every proposition which tended to prevent or even to postpone for an hour the total abolition of the slave-trade.
Two divisions took place. In the first there were 193 votes for gradual abolition, and 125 for immediate; and in the second there were 230 for gradual, and 85 for no abolition at all. On the 25th of April, Mr. Dundas brought forward a plan conformable with the resolutions of the house above mentioned. He considered that eight years ought to be allowed the planters to stock themselves with negroes, and therefore moved that the year 1800 should be the epoch, after which no more slaves should be imported from Africa in British vessels to the West Indies. Sir Edward Knatchbull proposed the year H96, which motion was carried by 151 to 132.
After the debate, the committee for the abolition of the slave-trade held a meeting and voted their thanks to Mr. Wilberforce for his motion, and to Mr. Pitt Mr. Fox, and those other members of the house who had so eloquently supported it. They resolved, also, that a gradual abolition of the slave-trade was not an adequate remedy for its injustice and cruelty; neither could it be deemed a compliance with the general wishes of the people, as expressed ic their numerous and urgent petitions to parliament; and they resolved, lastly, to use all constitutional means to obtain its immediate abolition.