It would give credibility to every other act of
violence stated in the evidence, however enormous it might appear.
But he would now have recourse for a moment to circumstantial evidence. An
adverse witness, who had lived on the Gold Coast, had said that the only
way, in which children could be enslaved, was by whole families being sold
when the principals had been condemned for witchcraft. But he said at the
same time, that few were convicted of this crime, and that the younger part
of a family in these cases was sometimes spared. But if this account were
true, it would follow that the children in the slave-vessels would be few
indeed. But it had been proved, that the usual proportion of these was
never less than a fourth of the whole cargo on that coast, and also, that
the kidnapping of children was very prevalent there.
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. B. Edwards in the Assembly of Jamaica,
who, though he was hostile to his propositions, had yet the candour to
deliver himself in the following manner there.
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