Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/41

28 occasion, manifestly and directly interposed." "England itself … is in some sort the slave of Southern blacks."

" The few articles which are most necessary to modern civilization — suffar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco — are products of compulsory black labour."

Another writer, whom I take to be a clergyman and a Jesuityf ^oes so far as to forbid all sympathy for the sufferings of slaves:—

"Sympathy for them could do them no good, because a relief from slavery could not elevate them—could do them no good, but an injury. Hence such sympathy is forbidden;" meaning it is forbidden by God, in such passages as this: "Thine eye shall not pity him" (Deut. xix. 13). He maintains that African slavery is a punishment divinely inflicted on the descendants of Ham for his offence. Ham, he thinks, married a descendant of Cain, and his children inherited the " mark" set upon the first murderer!

Let us now look at some facts connected with Slavery in America.

No nation has, on the whole, treated its African slaves so gently as the Americans. This is proved by the rapid increase of the slave population. Compare America in this respect with some of the British West Indies. In seventy-three years, from 1702 to 1776, the increase of the coloured popidation of Jamaica was 158,614; but in that period there were imported and retained in the island, 360,622 ; so the slave-owners in seventy-three years must have used up and destroyed about 300,000 human beings. This dreadful exploitation continued a long time. From 1775 to 1794, about 113,000 more were imported ;

i" "John Fletcher of Louisiana," in his 8i/vtMes on SUwery wi (119) Easy Lessons. Natchez, 1852. 8vo. pp. xiv. and 637. The author luxu- riates in the idea of Slavery, and gives the public a paradigm of the Hebrew verb ^?y, to slave, in Teal, nvphal, pihel, puhol, hvphil hophaZ^ hitlvpael ; and a declension of the ^* facUtiotbs euphonic segholaU^* noun, •TO, a slcwe. I In 1658 there were in Jamaica 1,400 slaves. 1670 » )> 8,000 „ 1673 »i n 9,504 „ 1702 9» it 36,000 „ 1734 »» n 86,546 „ [persons. 1775 » n 194,614 „ and firee coloured