The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition Part 2

CHAPTER II.

As it is desirable to know the true sources of events in history, so this will be realized in that of the abolition of the Slave Trade.--Inquiry as to those who favoured the cause of the Africans previously to the year 1787.--All these to be considered as necessary forerunners in that cause.--First forerunners were Cardinal Ximenes; the Emperor Charles the Fifth; Pope Leo the Tenth; Elizabeth, queen of England; Louis the Thirteenth, of France.

It would be considered by many, who have stood at the mouth of a river, and witnessed its torrent there, to be both an interesting and a pleasing journey to go to the fountain head, and then to travel on its banks downwards, and to mark the different streams in each side, which should run into it and feed it. So I presume the reader will not be a little interested and entertained, in viewing with me the course of the abolition of the Slave Trade, in first finding its source, and then in tracing the different springs which have contributed to its increase.

And here I may observe that, in doing this, we shall have advantages, which historians have not always had in developing the causes of things.

Many have handed down to us, events, for the production of which they have given us but their own conjectures. There has been often, indeed, such a distance between the events themselves, and the lives of those who have recorded them, that the different means and motives belonging to them have been lost through time. On the present occasion, however, we shall have the peculiar satisfaction of knowing, that we communicate the truth, or that those which we unfold, are the true causes and means; for the most remote of all the human springs, which can be traced as having any bearing upon the great event in question, will fall within the period of three centuries, and the most powerful of them within the last twenty years. These circ.u.mstances indeed have had their share in inducing me to engage in the present history. Had I measured it by the importance of the subject, I had been deterred; but believing that most readers love the truth, and that it ought to be the object of all writers to promote it, and believing, moreover, that I was in possession of more facts on this subject than any other person, I thought I was peculiarly called to undertake it.

In tracing the different streams from whence the torrent arose, which has now happily swept away the Slave Trade, I must begin with an inquiry as to those who favoured the cause of the injured Africans, from the year 1516, to the year 1787, at which latter period, a number of persons a.s.sociated themselves, in England, for its abolition. For though they, who belonged to this a.s.sociation, may, in consequence of having pursued a regular system, be called the princ.i.p.al actors, yet it must be acknowledged, that their efforts would never have been so effectual, if the minds of men had not been prepared by others, who had moved before them. Great events have never taken place without previously disposing causes. So it is in the case before us. Hence they, who lived even in early times, and favoured this great cause, may be said to have been necessary precursors in it. And here it may be proper to observe, that it is by no means necessary that all these should have been themselves actors in the production of this great event. Persons have contributed towards it in different ways:--Some have written expressly on the subject, who have had no opportunity of promoting it by personal exertions. Others have only mentioned it incidentally in their writings.

Others, in an elevated rank and station, have cried out publicly concerning it, whose sayings have been recorded. All these, however, may be considered as necessary forerunners in their day; for all of them have brought the subject more or less into notice. They have more or less enlightened the mind upon it; they have more or less impressed it; and therefore each may be said to have had his share in diffusing and keeping up a certain portion of knowledge and feeling concerning it, which has been eminently useful in the promotion of the cause.

It is rather remarkable, that the first forerunners and coadjutors should have been men in power.

So early as in the year 1503, a few slaves had been sent from the Portuguese settlements in Africa into the Spanish colonies in America.

In 1511, Ferdinand the Fifth, king of Spain, permitted them to be carried in great numbers. Ferdinand, however, must have been ignorant in these early times of the piratical manner in which the Portuguese had procured them. He could have known nothing of their treatment when in bondage, nor could he have viewed the few uncertain adventurous transportations of them into his dominions in the western world, in the light of a regular trade. After his death, however; a proposal was made by Bartholomew de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, to Cardinal Ximenes, who held the reigns of the government of Spain till Charles the Fifth came to the throne, for the establishment of a regular system of commerce in the persons of the native Africans. The object of Bartholomew de las Casas was undoubtedly to save the American Indians, whose cruel treatment and almost extirpation he had witnessed during his residence among them, and in whose behalf he had undertaken a voyage to the court of Spain. It is difficult to reconcile this proposal with the humane and charitable spirit of the bishop of Chiapa. But it is probable he believed that a code of laws would soon be established in favour both of Africans and of the natives in the Spanish settlements, and that he flattered himself that, being about to return and to live in the country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it. The cardinal, however, with a foresight, a benevolence, and a justice which will always do honour to his memory, refused the proposal, not only judging it to be unlawful to consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be very inconsistent to deliver the inhabitants of one country from a state of misery by consigning to it those of another. Ximenes, therefore, may be considered as one of the first great friends of the Africans after the partial beginning of the trade.

This answer of the cardinal, as it showed his virtue as an individual, so was it peculiarly honourable to him as a public man, and ought to operate as a lesson to other statesmen, how they admit any thing new among political regulations and establishments, which is connected in the smallest degree with injustice; for evil, when once sanctioned by governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and may, unless seasonably checked, become so ramified as to effect the reputation of a country, and to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the political concerns of the state. In no instance has this been verified more than in the case of the Slave Trade. Never was our national character more tarnished, and our prosperity more clouded by guilt.

Never was there a monster more difficult to subdue. Even they, who heard as it were the shrieks of oppression, and wished to a.s.sist the sufferers, were fearful of joining in their behalf. While they acknowledged the necessity of removing one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and were, therefore, only able to relieve their feelings by, lamenting, in the bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.

After the death of Cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who had come into power, encouraged the Slave Trade. In 1517, he granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long enough to repent of what he had thus inconsiderately done; for in the year 1542, he made a code of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign dominions, and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order that all slaves in his American islands should he made free. This order was executed by Pedro de la Gasca. Manumission took place as well in Hispaniola as on the Continent; but on the return of Gasca to Spain, and the retirement of Charles into a monastery, slavery was revived.

It is impossible to pa.s.s over this instance of the abolition of slavery by Charles, in all his foreign dominions, without some comments. It shows him, first, to have been a friend both to the Indians and the Africans, as a part of the human race; it shows he was ignorant of what he was doing when he gave his sanction to this cruel trade; it shows when legislators give one set of men undue power over another, how quickly they abuse it, or he never would have found himself obliged, in the short s.p.a.ce of twenty-five years, to undo that which he had countenanced as a great state measure; and while it confirms the former lesson to statesmen of watching the beginnings or principles of things in their political movements, it should teach them never to persist in the support of evils, through the false shame of being obliged to confess that they had once given them their sanction, nor to delay the cure of them because, politically speaking, neither this nor that is the proper season; but to do them away instantly, as there can only be one fit or proper time in the eye of religion, namely, on the conviction of their existence.

From the opinions of Cardinal Ximenes and of the emperor Charles the Fifth, I hasten to that which was expressed much about the same time, in a public capacity, by Pope Leo the Tenth. The Dominicans in Spanish America, witnessing the cruel treatment which the slaves underwent there, considered slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the gospel, and recommended the abolition of it. The Franciscans did not favour the former in this their scheme of benevolence; and the consequence was, that a controversy on this subject sprung up between them, which was carried to this pope for his decision. Leo exerted himself, much to his honour, in behalf of the poor sufferers, and declared "That not only the Christian religion, but that Nature herself cried out against a state of slavery." This answer was certainly worthy of one who was deemed the head of the Christian Church. It must, however, be confessed that it would have been strange if Leo, in his situation as pontiff, had made a different reply. He could never have denied that G.o.d was no respecter of persons. He must have acknowledged that men were bound to love each other as brethren; and, if he admitted the doctrine that all men were accountable for their actions hereafter, he could never have prevented the deduction that it was necessary they should be free. Nor could he, as a man of high attainments, living early in the sixteenth century, have been ignorant of what had taken place in the twelfth; or that, by the latter end of this latter century, christianity had obtained the undisputed honour of having extirpated slavery from the western part of the European world.

From Spain and Italy I come to England. The first importation of slaves from Africa, by our countrymen, was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562. This great princess seems on the very commencement of the trade to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a religious scruple concerning it; and, indeed, to have revolted at the very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most unjustifiable means might be made use of to procure the persons of the natives of Africa. And in what light she would have viewed any acts of this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact,--that when Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins returned from his first voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent for him, and, as we learn from Hill's _Naval History_ expressed her concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that "it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers." Captain Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect, but he did not keep his word; for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the inhabitants and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words:--"Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will some time be the destruction of all who allow or encourage it." That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described to have uttered, can be only attributed to the pains taken by those concerned in it to keep her ignorant of the truth.

From England I now pa.s.s over to France. Labat, a Roman missionary, in his account of the isles of America, mentions that Louis the Thirteenth was very uneasy when he was about to issue the edict by which all Africans coming into his colonies were to be made slaves, and that this uneasiness continued till he was a.s.sured that the introduction of them in this capacity into his foreign dominions was the readiest way of converting them to the principles of the Christian religion.

These, then, were the first forerunners in the great cause of the abolition of the Slave Trade: nor have their services towards it been of small moment; for, in the first place, they have enabled those who came after them, and who took an active interest in the same cause, to state the great authority of their opinions and of their example. They have enabled them, again, to detail the history connected with these, in consequence of which circ.u.mstances have been laid open which it is of great importance to know; for have they not enabled them to state that the African Slave Trade never would have been permitted to exist but for the ignorance of those in authority concerning it--that at its commencement there was a revolting of nature against it--a suspicion, a caution, a fear, both as to its unlawfulness and its effects? Have they not enabled them to state that falsehoods were advanced, and these concealed under the mask of religion, to deceive those who had the power to suppress it? Have they not enabled them to state that this trade began in piracy, and that it was continued upon the principles of force?

And, finally, have not they who have been enabled to make these statements, knowing all the circ.u.mstances connected with them, found their own zeal increased, and their own courage and perseverance strengthened; and have they not, by the communication of them to others, produced many friends and even labourers in the cause?

CHAPTER III.

Forerunners continued to 1787; divided from this time into four cla.s.ses.--First cla.s.s consists princ.i.p.ally of persons in Great Britain of various descriptions: G.o.dwyn; Baxter; Tryon; Southern; Primatt; Montesquieu; Hutcheson; Sharp; Ramsay; and a mult.i.tude of others, whose names and services follow.

I have hitherto traced the history of the forerunners in this great cause only up to about the year 1640. If I am to pursue my plan, I am to trace it to the year 1787. But in order to show what I intend in a clearer point of view, I shall divide those who have lived within this period, and who will now consist of persons in a less elevated station, into four cla.s.ses: and I shall give to each cla.s.s a distinct consideration by itself.

Several of our old English writers, though they have not mentioned the African Slave Trade, or the slavery consequent upon it, in their respective works, have yet given their testimony of condemnation against both. Thus our great Milton:--

O execrable son, so to aspire, Above his brethren, to himself a.s.suming Authority usurpt, from G.o.d not given; He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord, such t.i.tle to himself Reserving, human left from human free.

I might mention Bishop Saunderson and others, who bore a testimony equally strong against the lawfulness of trading in the persons of men, and of holding them in bondage; but as I mean to confine myself to those who have favoured the cause of the Africans specifically, I cannot admit their names into any of the cla.s.ses which have been announced.

Of those, who compose the first cla.s.s, defined as it has now been, I cannot name any individual who took a part in this cause till between the years 1670 and 1680; for in the year 1640, and for a few years afterwards, the nature of the trade and of the slavery was but little known, except to a few individuals, who were concerned in them; and it is obvious that these would neither endanger their own interest nor proclaim their own guilt by exposing it. The first, whom I shall mention is Morgan G.o.dwyn, a clergyman of the established church. This pious divine wrote a treatise upon the subject, which he dedicated to the then archbishop of Canterbury. He gave it to the world, at the time mentioned, under the t.i.tle of "_The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate._" In this treatise he lays open the situation of these oppressed people, of whose sufferings he had been an eye-witness in the island of Barbados.

He calls forth the pity of the reader in an affecting manner, and exposes with a nervous eloquence the brutal sentiments and conduct of their oppressors. This seems to have been the first work undertaken in England expressly in favour of the cause.

The next person, whom I shall mention, is Richard Baxter, the celebrated divine among the nonconformists. In his _Christian Directory_, published about the same time as _The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate_, he gives advice to those masters in foreign plantations, who have negroes and other slaves. In this he protests loudly against this trade. He says expressly that they, who go out as pirates, and take away poor Africans, or people of another land, who never forfeited life or liberty, and make them slaves and sell them, are the worst of robbers, and ought to be considered as the common enemies of mankind; and that they who buy them, and use them as mere beasts for their own convenience, regardless of their spiritual welfare, are fitter to be called demons than christians.

He then proposes several queries, which he answers in a clear and forcible manner, showing the great inconsistency of this traffic, and the necessity of treating those then in bondage with tenderness and a due regard to their spiritual concerns.

The _Directory_ of Baxter was succeeded by a publication called _Friendly Advice to the Planters_ in three parts. The first of these was, _A brief Treatise of the princ.i.p.al Fruits and Herbs that grow in Barbados, Jamaica, and other Plantations in the West Indies_. The second was, _The Negroes' Complaint, or their hard Servitude, and the Cruelties practised upon them by divers of their Masters professing Christianity_.

And the third was, _A Dialogue between an Ethiopian and a Christian, his Master, in America_. In the last of these, Thomas Tryon, who was the author, inveighs both against the commerce and the slavery of the Africans, and in a striking manner examines each by the touchstone of reason, humanity, justice, and religion.

In the year 1696, Southern brought forward his celebrated tragedy of _Oronooko_, by means of which many became enlightened upon the subject, and interested in it. For this tragedy was not a representation of fict.i.tious circ.u.mstances, but of such as had occurred in the colonies, and as had been communicated in a publication by Mrs. Behn.

The person who seems to have noticed the subject next was Dr. Primatt.

In his _Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy, and on the Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals_, he takes occasion to advert to the subject of the African Slave Trade. "It has pleased G.o.d," says he, "to cover some men with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to enslave and tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or black, such he is by G.o.d's appointment, and, abstractly considered, is neither a subject for pride, nor an object of contempt."

After Dr. Primatt, we come to Baron Montesquieu, "Slavery," says he, "is not good in itself. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing from virtuous motives; not to the master, because he contracts among his slaves all sorts of bad habits, and accustoms himself to the neglect of all the moral virtues.

He becomes haughty, pa.s.sionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel." And with respect to this particular species of slavery, he proceeds to say, "It is impossible to allow the negroes are men, because, if we allow them to be men, it will begin to be believed that we ourselves are not Christians."

Hutcheson, in his _System of Moral Philosophy_, endeavours to show, that he who detains another by force in slavery, can make no good t.i.tle to him, and adds, "Strange that in any nation where a sense of liberty prevails, and where the Christian religion is professed, custom and high prospect of gain can so stupify the consciences of men, and all sense of natural justice, that they can hear such computations made about the value of their fellow-men and their liberty, without abhorrence and indignation!"

Foster, in his _Discourses on Natural Religion and Social Virtue_, calls the slavery under our consideration "a criminal and outrageous violation of the natural rights of mankind." I am sorry that I have not room to say all that he says on this subject. Perhaps the following beautiful extracts may suffice:--

"But notwithstanding this, we ourselves, who profess to be Christians, and boast of the peculiar advantages we enjoy by means of an express revelation of our duty from heaven, are in effect these very untaught and rude heathen countries. With all our superior light, we instil into those whom we call savage and barbarous, the most despicable opinion of human nature. We, to the utmost of our power, weaken and dissolve the universal tie that binds and unites mankind. We practise what we should exclaim against as the utmost excess of cruelty and tyranny, if nations of the world, differing in colour and form of government from ourselves, were so possessed of empire as to be able to reduce us to a state of unmerited and brutish servitude. Of consequence, we sacrifice our reason, our humanity, our Christianity, to an unnatural sordid gain. We teach other nations to despise and trample under foot all the obligations of social virtue. We take the most effectual method to prevent the propagation of the Gospel, by representing it as a scheme of power and barbarous oppression, and an enemy to the natural privileges and rights of man."

"Perhaps all that I have now offered may be of very little weight to restrain this enormity, this aggravated iniquity.

However, I shall still have the satisfaction of having entered my private protest against a practice which, in my opinion, bids that G.o.d, who is the G.o.d and Father of the Gentiles unconverted to Christianity, most daring and bold defiance, and spurns at all the principles both of natural and revealed religion."

The next author is Sir Richard Steele, who, by means of the affecting story of Inkle and Yarico, holds up this trade again to our abhorrence.

In the year 1735, Atkins, who was a surgeon in the navy, published his _Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies, in his Majesty's s.h.i.+ps Swallow and Weymouth_. In this work he describes openly the manner of making the natives slaves, such as by kidnapping, by unjust accusations and trials, and by other nefarious means. He states also the cruelties practised upon them by the white people, and the iniquitous ways and dealings of the latter, and answers their argument, by which they insinuated that the condition of the Africans was improved by their transportation to other countries.

From this time, the trade beginning to be better known, a mult.i.tude of persons of various stations and characters sprung up, who by exposing it, are to be mentioned among the forerunners and coadjutors in the cause.

Pope, in his _Essay on Man_, where he endeavours to show that happiness in the present depends, among other things, upon the hope of a future state, takes an opportunity of exciting compa.s.sion in behalf of the poor African, while he censures the avarice and cruelty of his master:--

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees G.o.d in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky-way; Yet simple Nature to his hope was given Behind the cloud-topt hill an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

Thomson also, in his _Seasons_, marks this traffic as destructive and cruel, introducing the well-known fact of sharks following the vessels employed in it:--

Increasing still the sorrows of those storms, His jaws horrific arm'd with three-fold fate, Here dwells the direful shark. Lured by the scent Of steaming crowds, of rank disease, and death; Behold! he rus.h.i.+ng cuts the briny flood, Swift as the gale can bear the s.h.i.+p along, And from the partners of that cruel trade; Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, Demands his share of prey, demands themselves.

The stormy fates descend: one death involves Tyrants and slaves; when straight their mangled limbs Cras.h.i.+ng at once, he dyes the purple seas With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.