Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/226

208 carriages, and harness. So totally unprotected were they, that persons wholly unconnected decoyed or seized them in the streets, and sold them to captains of West India ships. Thus was England for a time disgraced as the seat both of slavery and a slave-trade! It may just be remarked here, that there is nothing so barbarous and atrocious, but that human nature may be familiarized to it by habit and opportunity. It was indignantly denied by the advocates of slavery that negroes were kidnapped in Africa; but when human beings were a marketable commodity, they were kidnapped even in England. Another plea was, that the black-skinned negro was of an inferior race, upon the level with brutes; and that to enslave him, was not to enslave a man. But when kidnapping was found to be a profitable trade, those who engaged in it scrupled not at the colour of skin, but often seized children or unwary persons of European birth and complexion, and consigned them to the same slavery as the negroes. In the family of the writer of these pages, a boy of nine or ten years old was thus stolen and conveyed to Virginia, where for many years he worked as a slave, without the means of informing his distressed family of his condition; nor was this an uncommon case in those days.

In the year 1765, an African slave, named Jonathan Strong, was brought from Barbadoes by his master, who treated him very cruelly, particularly by beating his head with a pistol, which occasioned the head to swell, and afterwards produced a disorder in the eyes, and threatened blindness. To this an ague and fever succeeded, and lameness in both his legs. In this deplorable condition he was