Page:Thorpe (1819) A commentary on the treaties.pdf/55

51 to transfer all the vigour and strength of Africa into the Brazil territory, and leave only the dregs of a population to generate fresh victims for rapacity!

The facts which I published last year in my View of the increased Slave Trade, were scarcely credible; but the accounts I have lately received are still more deplorable. I laid before the public, proof to establish that the trade had increased more than double since 1807 when it was abolished by England; but now I have statements from Cuba, that ten thousand slaves have been brought into that island in a week, (our newspapers say twelve thousand) and my correspondents in Africa and commercial friends from that coast, have assured me the Portuguese Slave Trade has greatly increased since 1817, that the sea is almost covered with vessels full of slaves, and that the trade is perfectly uninterrupted: at Washington, the returns from the custom-house at the Havanna have been published, and the number of slaves landed at that one port in a day amount to 1637, the date of the arrivals and the names of the vessels carrying them are given minutely: is it not most unaccountable that this devastation is permitted? That a hundred thousand brethren made in the perfection of God’s image, and endowed with reason, should be annually debased into slaves, torn from every happiness

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