Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/74

 "It has been proved, by documents which can not be controverted, that for every cargo of slaves shipped towards the end of the last century, two cargoes, or twice the numbers in one cargo, wedged together in a mass of living corruption, are now borne on the waves of the Atlantic; and that the cruelties and horrors of the traffic have been increased and aggravated by the very efforts we have made for its abolition. Each individual has more to endure; aggravated suffering reaches multiplied numbers. At the time I am writing, there are at least twenty thousand human beings on the Atlantic, exposed to every variety of wretchedness which belongs to the middle passage. . . . I am driven to the sorrowful conviction, that the year from September, 1837, to September, 1838, is distinguished beyond all preceding years for the extent of the trade, for the intensity of its miseries, and for the unusual havoc it makes of human life."

Judge Joseph Story, in his charge to the grand jury of the United States Circuit Court, in Portsmouth, N. H., May term, 1820, after reviewing the laws which have been enacted for the suppression of the slave trade, remarked:

"Under such circumstances, it might well be supposed that the slave trade would, in practice, be extinguished, — that virtuous men would, by their abhorrence, stay its polluted march, and wicked men would be overawed by its potent punishment. But, unfortunately, the case is far otherwise. We have but too many melancholy proofs, from unquestionable sources, that it is still carried on with all the implacable ferocity and insatiable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasion; and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened, rather than