On what part of it they founded their honour he could not
conjecture, except from those passages in the evidence, where it appeared,
that their agents in Africa had systematically practised every fraud and
villainy, which the meanest and most unprincipled cunning could suggest, to
impose on the ignorance of those with whom they traded.
The same gentleman had also lamented, that the evidence had not been taken
upon oath. He himself lamented it too. Numberless facts had been related by
eye-witnesses, called in support of the abolition, so dreadfully atrocious,
that they appeared incredible; and seemed rather, to use the expression of
Ossian, like "the histories of the days of other times." These procured for
the trade a species of acquittal, which it could not have obtained, had the
committee been authorised to administer an oath. He apprehended also, in
this case, that some other persons would have been rather more guarded in
their testimony. Captain Knox would not then perhaps have told the
committee, that six hundred slaves could have had comfortable room at night
in his vessel of about one hundred and forty tons; when there could have
been no more than five feet six inches in length, and fifteen inches in
breadth, to about two thirds of his number.
Pages:
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262