The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade | Page 5

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benefit of those, to whom they are under no obligation, by any law
either natural or divine, to obey. We are to see them, if refusing the
commands of their purchasers, however weary, or feeble, or indisposed,

subject to corporal punishments, and, if forcibly resisting them, to
death. We are to see them in a state of general degradation and misery.
The knowledge, which their oppressors have of their own crime in
having violated the rights of nature, and of the disposition of the
injured to seek all opportunities of revenge, produces a fear, which
dictates to them the necessity of a system of treatment by which they
shall keep up a wide distinction between the two, and by which the
noble feelings of the latter shall be kept down, and their spirits broken.
We are to see them again subject to individual persecution, as anger, or
malice, or any bad passion may suggest. Hence the whip--the
chain--the iron-collar. Hence the various modes of private torture, of
which so many accounts have been truly given. Nor can such horrible
cruelties be discovered so as to be made punishable, while the
testimony of any number of the oppressed is invalid against the
oppressors, however they may be offences against the laws. And, lastly,
we are to see their innocent offspring, against whose personal liberty
the shadow of an argument cannot be advanced, inheriting all the
miseries of their parents' lot.
The evil then, as far as it has been hitherto viewed, presents to us in its
three several departments a measure of human suffering not to be
equalled--not to be calculated--not to be described. But would that we
could consider this part of the subject as dismissed! Would that in each
of the departments now examined there was no counterpart left us to
contemplate! But this cannot be. For if there be persons, who suffer
unjustly, there must be others, who oppress. And if there be those who
oppress, there must be to the suffering, which has been occasioned, a
corresponding portion of immorality or guilt.
We are obliged then to view the counterpart of the evil in question,
before we can make a proper estimate of the nature of it. And, in
examining this part of it, we shall find that we have a no less frightful
picture to behold than in the former cases; or that, while the miseries
endured by the unfortunate Africans excite our pity on the one hand,
the vices, which are connected with them, provoke our indignation and
abhorrence on the other. The Slave-trade, in this point of view, must
strike us as an immense mass of evil on account of the criminality

attached to it, as displayed in the various branches of it, which have
already been examined. For, to take the counterpart of the evil in the
first of these, can we say, that no moral turpitude is to be placed to the
account of those, who living on the continent of Africa give birth to the
enormities, which take place in consequence of the prosecution of this
trade? Is not that man made morally worse, who is induced to become a
tiger to his species, or who, instigated by avarice, lies in wait in the
thicket to get possession of his fellow-man? Is no injustice manifest in
the land, where the prince, unfaithful to his duty, seizes his innocent
subjects, and sells them for slaves? Are no moral evils produced among
those communities, which make war upon other communities for the
sake of plunder, and without any previous provocation or offence?
Does no crime attach to those, who accuse others falsely, or who
multiply and divide crimes for the sake of the profit of the punishment,
and who for the same reason, continue the use of barbarous and absurd
ordeals as a test of innocence or guilt?
In the second of these branches the counterpart of the evil is to be seen
in the conduct of those, who purchase the miserable natives in their
own country, and convey them to distant lands. And here questions,
similar to the former, may be asked. Do they experience no corruption
of their nature, or become chargeable with no violation of right, who,
when they go with their ships to this continent, know the enormities
which their visits there will occasion, who buy their fellow-creature
man, and this, knowing the way in which he comes into their hands,
and who chain, and imprison, and scourge him? Do the moral feelings
of those persons escape without injury, whose hearts are hardened?
And can the hearts of those be otherwise than hardened, who are
familiar with the tears and groans of innocent strangers forcibly torn
away from every thing that is dear to them in life, who are accustomed