Page:Newton's Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade.pdf/17

12 constitution less able to support them; and lewdness, too frequently, terminates in death.

The risk of insurrections is to be added. These, I believe, are always meditated; for the Men Slaves are not, easily, reconciled to their confinement, and treatment; and if attempted, they are seldom suppressed without considerable loss; and sometimes they succeed, to the destruction of a whole ship's company at once. Seldom a year passes, but we hear of one or more such catastrophes: and we likewise hear, sometimes, of Whites and Blacks involved, in one moment, in one common ruin, by the gunpowder taking fire, and blowing up the ship.

How far the several causes, I have enumerated, may respectively operate, I cannot say: the fact however is sure, that a great number of our Seamen perish in the Slave Trade. Few ships, comparatively, are either blown up, or totally cut off, but some are. Of the rest, I have known some that have lost half their people, and some a larger proportion. I am far from saying, that it is always, or even often, thus; but, I believe, I shall state the matter sufficiently low, if I suppose, that, at least, one fifth part of those who go from England to the Coast of Africa, in ships which trade