Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/24

20 granted to Lebresa the exclusive right to import annually 4000 Africans, who were sold to the Genoese. The French under Louis XIII., and the English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, permitted the traffic, under the plea that the captives taken in war would thus be saved from death; although Elizabeth protested against the cruelties connected with the trade.

The African chiefs, stimulated by a desire for gain, waged war against their neighbors, and thousands were soon captured, and hurried to the coast, to be exchanged for rum, brandy, iron, and toys, which constituted the currency of Europeans in this traffic. The most unjust and cruel means were resorted to in order to carry on the inhuman barter. Peaceful villages were ruthlessly invaded; the innocent were charged with crimes that they never committed; children were torn from their parents, and bound together, two and two, by the neck, with heavy pieces of wood, and marched, or rather driven to the river or coast, where a multitude of purchasers were ready to place them on board their vessels, and doom them to all the horrors of the middle passage. Thus this traffic was conceived in sin, and baptized in every form of iniquity.