It was impossible to read the evidence, as it related to this trade,
without acknowledging the inhumanity of it, and our own disgrace. By what
means was it kept up in Africa? By wars instigated, not by the passions of
the natives, but by our avarice. He knew it would be said in reply to this,
that the slaves, who were purchased by us, would be put to death, if we
were not to buy them. But what should we say, if it should turn out, that
we were the causes of those very cruelties, which we affected to prevent?
But, if it were not so, ought the first nation in the world to condescend
to be the executioner of savages?
Another way of keeping up the Slave-trade was by the practice of
man-stealing. The evidence was particularly clear upon this head. This
practice included violence, and often bloodshed. The inhumanity of it
therefore could not be doubted.
The unhappy victims, being thus procured, were conveyed, he said, across
the Atlantic in a manner which justified the charge of inhumanity again.
Indeed the suffering here was so great, that neither the mind could
conceive nor the tongue describe it. He had said on a former occasion, that
in their transportation there was a greater portion of misery condensed
within a smaller space, than had ever existed in the known world.
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