Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/238

 continuance, they must have nerves of which he had no conception. We might find instances, indeed, in history, of men violating the feelings of nature on extraordinary occasions. Fathers had sacrificed their sons and daughters, and husbands their wives; but to imitate their characters, we ought to have not only nerves as strong as the two Brutuses, but to take care that we hnd a cause as good; or that we had motives for such a dereliction of our feelings as patriotic as those which historians had attributed to these when they handed them to the notice of the world.

But what was our motive in the case before us, to continue a trade which was a wholesale sacrifice of a whole order and race of our fellow-creatures? which carried them away by force from their native country, in order to subject them to the mere will and caprice, the tyranny and oppression of other human beings, for their whole natural lives, them and their posterity for ever! O most monstrous wickedness 1 unparalleled barbarity! And, what was more aggravating, this most complicated scene of robbery and murder which mankind had ever witnessed, had been honored by the name of trade.

That a number of human beings should be at all times ready to be furnished as fair articles of commerce, just as our occasions might require, was absurd. The argument of Mr. Pitt, on this head, was unanswerable. Our demand was fluctuating; it entirely ceased at some times; at others it was great and pressing. How was it possible, on every sudden call, to furnish a sufficient return in slaves without resorting to those execrable means of obtaining them which were stated in the evidence? These were of three sorts, and he would now examine them.

Captives in war, it was urged, were consigned either to death or slavery. This, however, he believed to be false in point of fact. But suppose it were true; did it not become us, with whom it was a custom, founded in the wisest policy, to pay the captives a peculiar respect and civility, to inculcate the same principles in Africa? But we were so far from doing this, that we encouraged wars for the sake of taking, not men's goods and possessions, but men themselves; and it was not the war which was the cause of the slave-trade, but the slave-trade which was the cause of the war. It was the practice of the slave-merchants to try to intoxicate the African kings in order to turn them to their purpose. A particular instance occurred in the evidence of a prince, who, when sober, resisted their wishes; but in the moment of inebriety, he gave the word for war, attacked the next village, and sold the inhabitants to the merchants.

The second mode was kidnapping. He referred the house to various instances of this in the evidence: but there was one in particular, from which we might immediately infer the frequency of the practice. A black trader had kidnapped a girl and sold her; but he was presently afterwards kidnapped and sold himself; and, when he asked the captain who bought him, "What! do you buy me, who am a great trader?" the only answer was, "Yes, I will buy you, or her, or any body else, provided any one will sell you;" and accordingly both the trader and the girl were carried to the West Indies and sold for slaves.