I learnt that
he took the yam and began to eat it, but he threw the fire overboard." Such
was his own account of the matter. This was eating by duresse, if any thing
could be called so. The captain, however, triumphed in his expedient, and
concluded by telling the committee, that he sold this very slave at Grenada
for forty pounds. Mark here the moral of the tale, and learn the nature and
the cure of sulkiness.
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 understandings;
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.
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