Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 | Page 5

the
Leaguers in and out the British Parliament--the invasion and
subjugation of Mexico, on the joint principles of lust of conquest and
the extension of Slavery. Deny these facts if you can. Learn, then, to
think, there may be democracy and republicanism without liberty or
freedom.
I pray God, that the protests and public appeals and remonstrances to
Government of the Anti-Slavery Society may not end in barren results.
But if the Leaguers and Democrats have their own way, its voice,
though just and righteous, will be at length reduced to a faint cry, a last
shriek of despair--overwhelmed by the loud laughs and jeers of the
fiends, which possess the dealers in human flesh and blood, and
surround unhappy and doomed Africa with a cordon of rapine and
murder, of blood and flames!
"Where the vultures and vampires of Mammon resort, Where Columbia
exulting drains Her life-blood from Africa's veins, Where the image of
God is accounted as base, And the image of Cæsar set up in its place."
If I were asked, "What can be done for Africa?" I should reply with no

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

when they are able to read the Bible! Would the Czar of Russia permit
such an impious rule as this to be made by his nobles for their slaves or
serfs? Such an action would render the liberties of a thousand republics
a mockery, a snare, and a delusion, and their names infamous
throughout the world.
And the time of us Englishmen will come next--our day of infamy!
unless we show ourselves worthy that transcendant position in which
Providence has placed us, at the pinnacle of the empires of Earth, as the
leaders and champions of universal freedom.
In noticing the efforts made for raising Africa from her immemorial
degradation, we are bound to confess our obligations to the
Mahometans for what they have done. If they have extirpated
Christianity from the soil of North Africa, and planted, instead of this
tree of fair and pure fruit, the more glaring and showy plant of
Islamism, they have, at the same time, endeavoured to raise Africa to
their own level of demi-civilization. Whilst we condemn their
slave-traffic as we condemn our own, we must do justice to