Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/30

 Proclamation being made to keep silence in the Court, the learned Judge in a solemn and impressive manner addressed the prisoner in these words:—Samuel Samo, you are placed at this bar to receive the sentence of the law as a convicted felon. The philanthropy of Great Britain having determined her to abolish the barbarous and inhuman traffic in slaves, allotted pains, penalties, and confiscations, to prohibit its continuance; but finding these ineffectual, established it felony by the 51st of the King, chap. 23., either to pursue it in any shape, or to aid and assist others in carrying it on. Under the act of parliament you have been arraigned, tried by an excellent jury, and found guilty. You have had every aid the best counsel in the colony could afford you, and every benefit the law could extend to you. It now remains for the Court to pronounce the sentence which the law directs. I feel myself awfully impressed by the responsibility of my situation. This statute has left great discretionary power in the breast of the Court; the period for transportation under fourteen years, and the power of reducing the punishment to three years labour and confinement, is submitted to its direction; but in this case, there was neither evidence in your favour to induce, nor recommendation from the Jury to justify a diminution of punishment; yet your counsel have pressed forcibly on the feelings of the Court. You are the first convicted under this act, and England will anxiously look for such an example to be made, as will infuse terror and dismay into the minds of every remaining slave factor on these coasts. The penalty of the law is not death, but it is worse, for it reduces the convict to the most infamous degradation of life. Should you be sentenced to labour, you would be clothed with a peculiar cap, jacket, and trowsers, to designate your disgraceful state, and you must labour on the wharf or fort with a fetter and log appended to some limb, to prevent your