On this great subject, the civilization of Africa, which, he confessed, was
near his heart, he would yet add a few observations. And first he would
say, that the present deplorable state of that country, especially when we
reflected that her chief calamities were to be ascribed to us, called for
our generous aid, rather than justified any despair, on our part, of her
recovery, and still less a repetition of our injuries. On what ground of
theory or history did we act, when we supposed that she was never to be
reclaimed? There was a time, which it might be now fit to call to
remembrance, when human sacrifices, and even, this very practice of the
Slave-trade, existed in our own island. Slaves, as we may read in Henry's
History of Great Britain, were formerly an established article of our
exports. "Great numbers," he says, "were exported, like cattle, from the
British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the Roman
market."--"Adultery, witchcraft, and debt," says the same historian, "were
probably some of the chief sources of supplying the Roman market with
British slaves--prisoners taken in war were added to the number--there
might be also among them some unfortunate gamesters, who, after having lost
all their goods, at length, staked themselves, their wives, and their
children.
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