Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/49

 surprizing and gratifying to contemplate the great body of work that has been done in this colony for effecting the abolition in a period comparatively so small. If we survey the whole of the operations which have been gradually going forward to help Africa, since the year 1788, we shall discover that the exertions of a few months in 1812 surpass them all. The restrictions put by law on the slave trade, from time to time, certainly deserve great commendation, because they were grounded on goodness and humanity, and their benefits were practically known to the poor enslaved African ; but may we not be permitted to inquire, without presumption, why humanity has moved in a slow and heavy step when it might have sped with rapid flight, bearing all the blessings benevolence could bestow. The cause, in my estimation, is no other than the same general one, which produces nearly all the mischief and misery in the world—the love of money, with its concomitant power. Can there be any other reason shewn why the same measures which are now in force for the extirpation of the slave trade should not have been adopted thirty years ago? The trade was then equally cruel and barbarous, equally disgraceful to man, and detestable in the sight of Heaven, as it is now rightly considered; but the merchant, the planter, and the factor, have been enriched by this lucrative commerce in their fellow-creatures, and they have received that patronage and countenance, which wealth, however obtained or employed, is seldom denied. The opulence accumulated by this vile trade has been prodigious, and a great portion of it has been monopolized by the British slave merchants, who, from their various facilities, were always able to procure, at the best rate, the articles adapted to the African market. These articles were, and still are, bartered for human beings. This subject shall be for future enlargement. The trials will show to what expedients the slave trader has resorted; and how thoroughly they have been exposed and defeated by the