Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/239

 The third mode of obtaining slaves was by crimes committed or imputed. One of these was adultery. But was Africa the place, where Englishmen, above all others, were to go to find out and punish adulterers? Did it become us to cast the first stone? It was a most extraordinary pilgrimage for a most extraordinary purpose 1 And yet upon this plea we justified our right of carrying off its inhabitants. The offense alleged next was witchcraft. What a reproach it was to lend ourselves to this superstition! Yes: we stood by; we heard the trial; we knew the crime to be impossible, and that the accused must be innocent: but we waited in patient silence for his condemnation; and then we lent our friendly aid to the police of the country, by buying the wretched convict, with all his family, whom, for the benefit of Africa, we carried away, also, into perpetual slavery.

Of the slaves in the West Indies it had been said that they were taken from a worse state to a better. An honorable member, Mr. William Smith, had quoted some instances out of the evidence to the contrary. He also would quote one or two others. A slave under hard usage had run away. To prevent a repetition of the offense his owner sent for his surgeon, and desired him to cut off the man's leg. The surgeon refused. The owner, to render it a matter of duty in the surgeon, broke it. "Now," says he, "you must cut it off, or the man will die." We might console ourselves, perhaps, that this happened in a French island; but he would select another instance which had happened in one of our own. Mr. Ross heard the shrieks of a female issuing from an out-house, and so piercing that he determined to see what was going on. On looking in he perceived a young female tied up to a beam by her wrists, entirely naked, and in the act of involuntary writhing and swinging, while the author of her torture was standing below her with a lighted torch in his hand, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he knew not; but the human mind could not conceive a crime warranting such a punishment.

He was glad to see that these tales affected the house. Would they then sanction enormities, the bare recital of which made them shudder? Let them remember that humanity did not consist in a squeamish ear. It did not consist in shrinking and starting at such tales as these; but in a disposition of the heart to remedy the evils they unfolded. Humanity belonged rather to the mind than to the nerves. But if so, it should prompt men to charitable exertion. Such exertion was necessary in the present case. It was necessary for the credit of our jurisprudence at home and our character abroad. For what would any man think of our justice who should see another hanged for a crime which would be innocence itself, if compared with those enormities which were allowed in Africa and the West Indies under the sanction of the British parliament.

With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was pride only which suggested a difference between them and ourselves. There was a remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which he would quote. In one of the slave-ships was a person of consequence, a man once high in