Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 | Page 3

we must have cheap sugar at any risk, at any cost, even if wetted with the blood of the slaves. A ridiculous incident occurs to me. I once saw a child frightened into a dislike for white loaf sugar, by holding up a piece to the candle, and pretending it dropped blood. But there is no delusion or metaphor here, for the sugars of slave-plantations are really obtained by the blood-whippings and scourgings of the victimized slaves!
As to Cobden, his Cobdenites, and Satellites, they would sell their own souls, and the whole human race into bondage, to have a free trade in slaves and sugar. This new generation of impostors--who teach that all virtue and happiness consist in buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest markets--are now dogging at the heels of Government, in combination with the West India agents, to get them to re-establish a species of mitigated Slave-Trade, because, forsooth, there should be right and liberty to buy and sell a man, as there is right and liberty to buy and sell a beast.
I am not an enemy to Free Trade. I have duly noticed and praised the free-trade mart of Ghat, and shown how it prospers in comparison with the restricted system of the Turks, prevalent at Mourzuk. But this I do say, the case of Slavery was an exceptional case, as the Ten Hours' Factory Bill was an exceptional case in the regulation and restriction of labour. I fear, however, there are some of the Leaguers so outrageous in their advocacy of abstract principles, that they would have a free-trade in vice--a free-trade in consigning people to perdition! They are of the calibre of the men who wielded that dread engine of the "Reign of Terror," the "Committee of Public Safety," and made it death to speak a word against the "One Indivisible Republic[2]." These Leaguers are bent upon establishing an equal, although differently-formed, tyranny amongst us, and we cannot too soon and too energetically resist their odious and intolerable pretensions.
But I know not, whether these civil tyrants be so bad as the spiritual tyrants who have just set up for themselves what they call a "Free Kirk." These reverend gentlemen have received the fruits of the blood of the slaves, employed on the laborious fields of the Southern States of America, to build up their new Free Church, pretending they have a Divine right to receive the value of the forced-labour of slaves, and quoting Scripture like the Devil himself. When called upon to refund they refuse, and make the contributions of the Presbyterian slave-dealers of the United States a sort of corner-stone of their Free Kirk. Why these priests of religion out-O'Connell-O'Connell, who point-blank refused, for the support of his sham Repeal, and sent back contemptuously, the dollars spotted and tainted with the blood of the slaves! . . . . . . . . It is the old story, the old trick of our good friends, the Scottish divines, and their old leaven of Scottish fanaticism. We know them of ancient date. We have read a line of Milton, who in his time so admirably resisted their bigotry. It is immortal like all that our divine bard wrote. Here is the line--
"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."
The Free Kirk has cut its connexion with the State, because it says the State wishes to enslave its ministers. Yet it has no objection to receive monies from the slave-holders in America. The Free Kirk will build up its boasted freedom on the wasting blood and bones of the unhappy children of Africa! Why, indeed, should these Scottish divines, headed by the Presbyters Candlish and Cunningham, seek or advocate the freedom of the slaves held by their fellow Presbyters of the United States? Is it not enough that they seek and maintain their own freedom, and at whatsoever cost? Have they not received the pro-slavery mantle of the late venerated Dr. Chalmers, and can they, poor pigmies, possibly shake it off? Would it not be impious to do so? No, they cannot,--dare not do this. For, as it was said by Lord George Bentinck, of a quondam champion of the people, in the last Session of Parliament, "Liberty is on their tongues, but despotism is in their hearts."
What can be more humiliating to a generous and tolerant mind, than to see a body of Christian ministers struggling to obtain by a Parliamentary enactment, the cession of plots of land for building of churches for the worship of God in liberty and truth, from the tyrannical holders of the soil; and, at the same time, this very body of priests does not scruple to receive the money of American slave-holders, to build and endow these self-same churches? Such incredible inconsistency makes one sick