The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Vol. I by Thomas Clarkson

T >> Thomas Clarkson >> The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Vol. I

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"The Slave-trade," says he, "upon the coast of Africa, is not excused by
these principles. When slaves in that country are brought to market, no
questions, I believe, are asked about the origin or justice of the vendor's
title. It may be presumed, therefore, that this title is not always, if it
be ever, founded in any of the causes above assigned."

"But defect of right in the first purchase is the least crime with which
this traffic is chargeable. The natives are excited to war and mutual
depredation, for the sake of supplying their contracts, or furnishing the
markets with slaves. With this the wickedness begins. The slaves, torn away
from their parents, wives and children, from their friends and companions,
from their fields and flocks, from their home and country, are transported
to the European settlements in America, with no other accommodation on
ship-board than what is provided for brutes. This is the second stage of
the cruelty, from which the miserable exiles are delivered, only to be
placed, and that for life, in subjection to a dominion and system of laws,
the most merciless and tyrannical that ever were tolerated upon the face of
the earth: and from all that can be learned by the accounts of people upon
the spot, the inordinate authority, which the Plantation-laws confer upon
the slave-holder, is exercised by the English slave-holder, especially,
with rigour and brutality."

"But necessity is pretended, the name under which every enormity is
attempted to be justified; and after all, What is the necessity? It has
never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it is
here, by hired servants. It is said that it could not be cultivated with
quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labour of slaves; by
which means, a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells for sixpence,
could not be afforded under sixpence-halfpenny--and this is the necessity!"

"The great revolution, which has taken place in the western world, may
probably conduce (and who knows but that it was designed) to accelerate the
fall of this abominable tyranny: and now that this contest and the passions
which attend it are no more, there may succeed perhaps a season for
reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its assistance to
the support of an institution replete with human misery, was fit to be
trusted with an empire, the most extensive that ever obtained in any age or
quarter of the world."

The publication of these sentiments may be supposed to have produced an
extensive effect. For the Moral Philosophy was adopted early by some of the
colleges in our universities into the system of their education. It soon
found its way also into most of the private libraries of the kingdom; and
it was, besides, generally read and approved. Dr. Paley, therefore, must be
considered as having been a considerable coadjutor in interesting the mind
of the public in favour of the oppressed Africans.

In the year 1783, we find Mr. Sharp coming again into notice. We find him
at this time taking a part in a cause, the knowledge of which, in
proportion as it was disseminated, produced an earnest desire among all
disinterested persons for the abolition of the Slave-trade.

In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson and
others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, captain Collingwood,
alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel threw overboard
one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, in order to defraud
them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had been lost in
a natural way. In the course of the trial, which afterwards came on, it
appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of
them had already died; and several were ill and likely to die, when the
captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate, and others, to throw several
of them overboard, stating "that if they died a natural death, the loss
would fall upon the owners of the ship, but that, if they were thrown into
the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters." He selected accordingly one
hundred and thirty-two of the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of
these were immediately thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be
partakers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days
afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the
number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea;
but the rest with a noble resolution would not suffer the officers to touch
them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.

The plea, which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled act
of wickedness, was, that the captain discovered, when he made the proposal,
that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and that he had
missed his port; It was proved, however, in answer to this, that no one had
been put upon short allowance; and that, as if Providence had determined to
afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a shower of rain fell and
continued for three days immediately after the second lot of slaves had
been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their
vessels[A] with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the
destruction of the third.

[Footnote A: It appeared that they filled six.]

Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a
short-hand-writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the
course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated them
also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as the
guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as
principal minister of state. No notice however was taken by any of these,
of the information which had been thus sent them.

But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence of
the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an
account of it by Mr. Sharp in the newspapers, made such an impression upon
others, that new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find Thomas
Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured Africans. He
had lived to see his poem of The Dying Negro, which had been published in
1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had written a letter to a
friend in America, who was the possessor of slaves, to dissuade him by a
number of arguments from holding such property. And now, when the knowledge
of the case of the ship Zong was spreading, he published that letter under
the title of Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes.

In this same year, Dr. Porteus, bishop of Chester, but now bishop of
London, came forward as a new advocate for the natives of Africa. The way
in which he rendered them service, was by preaching a sermon in their
behalf, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Of the wide
circulation of this sermon, I shall say something in another place, but
much more of the enlightened and pious author of it, who from this time
never failed to aid, at every opportunity, the cause, which he had so ably
undertaken.

In the year 1784, Dr. Gregory produced his Essays Historical and Moral. He
took an opportunity of disseminating in these a circumstantial knowledge of
the Slave-trade, and an equal abhorrence of it at the same time. He
explained the manner of procuring slaves in Africa; the treatment of them
in the passage, (in which he mentioned the case of the ship Zong,) and the
wicked and cruel treatment of them in the colonies. He recited and refuted
also the various arguments adduced in defence of the trade. He showed that
it was destructive to our seamen. He produced many weighty arguments also
against the slavery itself. He proposed clauses for an act of parliament
for the abolition of both; showing the good both to England and her
colonies from such a measure, and that a trade might be substituted in
Africa, in various articles, for that which he proposed to suppress. By
means of the diffusion of light like this, both of a moral and political
nature, Dr. Gregory is entitled to be ranked among the benefactors to the
African race.

In the same year, Gilbert Wakefield preached a sermon at Richmond in Surry,
where, speaking of the people of this nation, he says, "Have we been as
renowned for a liberal communication of our religion and our laws as for
the possession of them? Have we navigated and conquered to save, to
civilize, and to instruct; or to oppress, to plunder, and to destroy? Let
India and Africa give the answer to these questions. The one we have
exhausted of her wealth and her inhabitants by violence, by famine, and by
every species of tyranny and murder. The children of the other we daily
carry from off the land of their nativity, like sheep to the slaughter, to
return no more. We tear them from every object of their affection, or, sad
alternative, drag them together to the horrors of a mutual servitude! We
keep them in the profoundest ignorance. We gall them in a tenfold chain,
with an unrelenting spirit of barbarity, inconceivable to all but the
spectators of it, unexampled among former ages and other nations, and
unrecorded even in the bloody registers of heathen persecution. Such is the
conduct of us enlightened Englishmen, reformed Christian. Thus have we
profited by our superior advantages, by the favour of God, by the doctrines
and example of a meek and lowly Saviour. Will not the blessings which we
have abused loudly testify against us? Will not the blood which we have
shed cry from the ground for vengeance upon our sins?"

In the same year, James Ramsay, vicar of Teston in Kent, became also an
able, zealous, and indefatigable patron of the African cause. This
gentleman had resided nineteen years in the island of St. Christopher,
where he had observed the treatment of the slaves, and had studied the laws
relating to them. On his return to England, yielding to his own feelings of
duty and the solicitations of some amiable friends, he published a work,
which he called An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of the African
Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies. After having given an account of the
relative situation of master and slave in various parts of the world, he
explained the low and degrading situation which the Africans held in
society in our own islands. He showed that their importance would be
increased, and the temporal interest of their masters promoted, by giving
them freedom, and by granting them other privileges. He showed the great
difficulty of instructing them in the state in which they then were, and
such as he himself had experienced both in his private and public attempts,
and such as others had experienced also. He stated the way in which private
attempts of this nature might probably be successful. He then answered all
objections against their capacities, as drawn from philosophy, form,
anatomy, and observation; and vindicated these from his own experience. And
lastly, he threw out ideas for the improvement of their condition, by an
establishment of a greater number of spiritual pastors among them; by
giving them more privileges than they then possessed; and by extending
towards them the benefits of a proper police. Mr. Ramsay had no other
motive for giving this work to the public, than that of humanity, or a wish
to serve this much-injured part of the human species. For he compiled it at
the hazard of forfeiting that friendship, which he had contracted with many
during his residence in the islands, and of suffering much in his private
property, as well as subjecting himself to the ill-will and persecution of
numerous individuals.

The publication of this book by one, who professed to have been so long
resident in the islands, and to have been an eye-witness of facts,
produced, as may easily be supposed, a good deal of conversation, and made
a considerable impression, but particularly at this time, when a storm was
visibly gathering over the heads of the oppressors of the African race.
These circumstances occasioned one or two persons to attempt to answer it,
and these answers brought Mr. Ramsay into the first controversy ever
entered into on this subject, during which, as is the case in most
controversies, the cause of truth was spread.

The works, which Mr. Ramsay wrote upon this subject, were, the Essay, just
mentioned, in 1784. An Enquiry, also, into the Effects of the Abolition of
the Slave-trade, in 1784. A Reply to personal Invectives and Objections, in
1785. A Letter to James Tobin, Esq., in 1787. Objections to the Abolition
of the Slave-trade, with Answers: and an Examination of Harris's Scriptural
Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-trade, in 1788;--and An Address on
the proposed Bill for the Abolition of the Slave-trade, in 1789. In short,
from the time when he first took up the cause, he was engaged in it till
his death, which was not a little accelerated by his exertions. He lived
however to see this cause in a train for parliamentary inquiry, and he died
satisfied, being convinced, as he often expressed, that the investigation
must inevitably lead to the total abolition of the Slave-trade.

In the next year, that is, in the year 1785, another advocate was seen in
monsieur Necker, in his celebrated work on the French Finances, which had
just been translated into the English language from the original work, in
1784. This virtuous statesman, after having given his estimate of the
population and revenue of the French West Indian colonies, proceeds thus:
"The colonies of France contain, as we have seen, near five hundred
thousand slaves, and it is from the number of these poor wretches that the
inhabitants set a value on their plantations. What a dreadful prospect! and
how profound a subject for reflection! Alas! how little are we both in our
morality and our principles! We preach up humanity, and yet go every year
to bind in chains twenty thousand natives of Africa! We call the Moors
barbarians and ruffians, because they attack the liberty of Europeans at
the risk of their own; yet these Europeans go, without danger, and as mere
speculators, to purchase slaves by gratifying the avarice of their masters,
and excite all those bloody scenes, which are the usual preliminaries of
this traffic!" He goes on still further in the same strain. He then shows
the kind of power, which has supported this execrable trade. He throws out
the idea of a general compact, by which all the European nations should
agree to abolish it. And he indulges the pleasing hope, that it may take
place even in the present generation.

In the same year we find other coadjutors coming before our view, but these
in a line different from that, in which any other belonging to this class
had yet moved. Mr. George White, a clergyman of the established church, and
Mr. John Chubb, suggested to Mr. William Tucket, the mayor of Bridgewater,
where they resided, and to others of that town, the propriety of
petitioning parliament for the abolition of the Slave-trade. This petition
was agreed upon, and, when drawn up, was as follows:--

"The humble petition of the inhabitants of Bridgewater showeth,

"That your petitioners, reflecting with the deepest sensibility on
the deplorable condition of that part of the human species, the
African Negros, who by the most flagitious means are reduced to
slavery and misery in the British colonies, beg leave to address
this honourable house in their behalf, and to express a just
abhorrence of a system of oppression, which no prospect of private
gain, no consideration of public advantage, no plea of political
expediency, can sufficiently justify or excuse.

"That, satisfied as your petitioners are that this inhuman system
meets with the general execration of mankind, they flatter
themselves the day is not far distant when it will be universally
abolished. And they most ardently hope to see a British parliament,
by the extinction of that sanguinary traffic, extend the blessings
of liberty to millions beyond this realm, hold up to an enlightened
world a glorious and merciful example, and stand foremost in the
defence of the violated rights of human nature."

This petition was presented by the honourable Ann Poulet, and Alexander
Hood, esq., (now lord Bridport) who were the members for the town of
Bridgewater. It was ordered to lie on the table. The answer, which these
gentlemen gave to their constituents relative to the reception of it in the
house of commons, is worthy of notice: "There did not appear," say they in
their common letter, "the least disposition to pay any farther attention to
it. Every one almost says, that the abolition of the Slave-trade must
immediately throw the West Indian islands into convulsions, and soon
complete their utter ruin. Thus they will not trust Providence for its
protection for so pious an undertaking."

In the year 1786, captain J.S. Smith of the royal navy offered himself to
the notice of the public in behalf of the African cause. Mr. Ramsay, as I
have observed before, had become involved in a controversy in consequence
of his support of it. His opponents not only attacked his reputation, but
had the effrontery to deny his facts. This circumstance occasioned captain
Smith to come forward. He wrote a letter to his friend Mr. Hill, in which
he stated that he had seen those things, while in the West Indies, which
Mr. Ramsay had asserted to exist, but which had been so boldly denied. He
gave also permission to Mr. Hill to publish this letter. Too much praise
cannot be bestowed on captain Smith, for thus standing forth in a noble
cause, and in behalf of an injured character.

The last of the necessary forerunners and coadjutors of this class, whom I
am to mention, was our much-admired poet, Cowper; and a great coadjutor he
was, when we consider what value was put upon his sentiments, and the
extraordinary circulation of his works. There are few persons, who have not
been properly impressed by the following lines:

"My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man. The nat'ral bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own, and having pow'r
T'inforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd,
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplor'd
As human Nature's broadest, foulest blot,--
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No! dear as freedom is,--and in my heart's
Just estimation priz'd above all price,--
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no Slaves at home--then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall[A].
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire--that where Britain's pow'r
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too."

[Footnote A: Expressions used in the great trial, when Mr. Sharp obtained
the verdict in favour of Somerset.]

CHAPTER IV.

_Second class of forerunners and coadjutors, up to May 1787, consists of
the Quakers in England--of George Fox, and others--of the body of the
Quakers assembled at the yearly meeting in 1727--and at various other
times--Quakers, as a body, petition Parliament--and circulate books on the
subject--Individuals among them become labourers and associate in behalf of
the Africans--Dilwyn--Harrison--and others--This the first association
ever formed in England for the purpose._

The second class of the forerunners and coadjutors in this great cause up
to May 1787 will consist of the Quakers in England.

The first of this class was George Fox, the venerable founder of this
benevolent society.

George Fox was contemporary with Richard Baxter, being born not long after
him, and dying much about the same time. Like him, he left his testimony
against this wicked trade. When he was in the island of Barbadoes, in the
year 1671, he delivered himself to those who attended his religious
meetings, in the following manner:--

"Consider with yourselves," says he, "if you were in the same condition as
the poor Africans are--who came strangers to you, and were sold to you as
slaves--I say, if this should be the condition of you or yours, you would
think it a hard measure; yea, and very great bondage and cruelty. And
therefore consider seriously of this; and do you for them, and to them, as
you would willingly have them, or any others do unto you, were you in the
like slavish condition, and bring them to know the Lord Christ." And in his
Journal, speaking of the advice, which he gave his friends at Barbadoes, he
says, "I desired also, that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly
and gently with their Negros, and not to use cruelty towards them, as the
manner of some had been, and that after certain years of servitude they
should make them free."

William Edmundson, who was a minister of the Society, and, indeed, a
fellow-traveller with George Fox, had the boldness in the same island to
deliver his sentiments to the governor on the same subject. Having been
brought before him and accused of making the Africans Christians, or, in
other words, of making them rebel and destroy their owners, he replied,
"that it was a good thing to bring them to the knowledge of God and Christ
Jesus, and to believe in him who died for them and all men, and that this
would keep them from rebelling, or cutting any person's throat; but if they
did rebel and cut their throats, as the governor insinuated they would, it
would be their own doing, in keeping them in ignorance and under
oppression, in giving them liberty to be common with women, like brutes,
and, on the other hand, in starving them for want of meat and clothes
convenient; thus giving them liberty in that which God restrained, and
restraining them in that which was meat and clothing."

I do not find any individual of this society moving in this cause for some
time after the death of George Fox and William Edmundson. The first
circumstance of moment, which I discover, is a Resolution of the whole
Society on the subject, at their yearly meeting held in London in the year
1727. The resolution was contained in the following words:--"It is the
sense of this meeting, that the importing of Negros from their native
country and relations by Friends, is not a commendable nor allowed
practice, and is therefore censured by this meeting."

In the year 1758 the Quakers thought it their duty, as a body to pass
another Resolution upon this subject. At this time the nature of the trade
beginning to be better known we find them more animated upon it, as the
following extract will show:--

"We fervently warn all in profession with us, that they carefully avoid
being any way concerned in reaping the unrighteous profits arising from the
iniquitous practice of dealing in Negro or other slaves; whereby, in the
original purchase, one man selleth another, as he doth the beasts that
perish, without any better pretension to a property in him, than that of
superior force; in direct violation of the Gospel rule, which teacheth all
to do as they would be done by, and to do good to all; being the reverse of
that covetous disposition, which furnisheth encouragement to those poor
ignorant people to perpetuate their savage wars, in order to supply the
demands of this most unnatural traffic, by which great numbers of mankind,
free by nature, are subject to inextricable bondage; and which hath often
been observed to fill their possessors with haughtiness, tyranny, luxury,
and barbarity, corrupting the minds and debasing the morals of their
children, to the unspeakable prejudice of religion and virtue, and the
exclusion of that holy spirit of universal love, meekness, and charity,
which is the unchangeable nature and the glory of true Christianity. We
therefore can do no less than, with the greatest earnestness, impress it
upon Friends every where, that they endeavour to keep their hands clear of
this unrighteous gain of oppression."

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