I know there are many who suppose us to be merciless oppressors in the East Indies, as well as the West. But if the suspicion be applied to our treatment of the poor, or the great mass of the people; it is utterly unfounded. There is no slavery in the dominions of the East India company, unless the condition of a few domestic life servants, may deserve the name; and even these are so treated, that their bondage can scarcely be distinguished from freedom. But the labouring classes of the community, are in general free; nay, for the most part, the agricultural labourers till their own leasehold lands; for which they pay a fixed and very moderate rent. In no part of India are they so happy in this respect, as within the British territories; and if the native princes have ever had cause to complain of us; to their subjects at least, it has been an advantage and a blessing, to be transferred to the government of the company. I heartily wish we were as innocent of neglecting their moral, and spiritual improvement, as of impairing their temporal welfare.*

If we cast our eyes around us in this happy island, there is still less matter of charge against the national conscience on the score of violence and oppression. In no other part of the globe, are the poor and helpless so well protected by the laws, or so humanely used by their superiors. Nor are the laws chargeable with injustice towards the less fortunate peasantry of our sister island; though here perhaps, there is much that ought to be reformed. If the legislature be now culpable in regard to Ireland, it is for omission

eth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity." Habakkuk ii, 8-12.

"The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; yea they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully." "Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them, I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; tl:eir own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord." Ezekiel xxii, 29–31.

"Behold therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee." Ezekiel xxii, 13.

"By the multitude of thy merchandize they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will destroy thee." "Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thy iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic: therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth, &c.—and thou shall be a terror, and never shall thou be any more." Ezekiel xxviii, 18, 19.

It is but just to say, that the late governor-general marquis Wellesley, was very laudably disposed to promote the religious instruction of the natives.

and neglect; rather than for positive wrong; nor does the fault arise. from any of those unrighteous principles, or from that oppressive use of power, which are so peculiarly offensive, to heaven.

If therefore we are suffering for such offences as have usually. provoked the scourge of the Most High, if it be as the protector of the poor and destitute, that God has entered into judgment with us, we must I repeat, look to Africa, and to the West Indies, for the causes of his wrath. But the magnitude of the crimes of the slave trade, still more than their specific character, will conduct us to the same conclusion,

Near 37,000 unhappy men, women, and children, are yearly carried by us from their native land to a far distant country; there to perish prematurely; or to end their days in hopeless captivity and bondage. They have given us no offence; they have, for the most part, committed no crime even against their countrymen, worthy of exile or slavery; the motive of our transporting them, is pure undefecated avarice. Yet by our hands, and by our procurement, the dearest ties of nature are barbarously rent asunder; the husband is dragged from the arms of his wife, the innocent child from the bosom of its parents, and the cries of their agonized feelings are ended only by the silence of despair, At this moment, ten thousand shrieks and groans, uttered by the helpless victims of British violence, are entering the ear of the Most High, the righteous judge of the whole earth, and demanding vengeance against us.

While our slave ships, like hungry vultures, hover continually over the coasts of that hapless continent, dreadful are the horrors in the interior by which their victims are prepared.

The exportable slavery of Africa, is for the most part, the produce only of crimes which we directly or indirectly stimulate the wretched natives to commit; and by our means, every species of misery, is continually propagated through the greater part of thatvast continent. Treachery, false accusation, man-stealing, midnight rapine, and conflagration, are ordinary means, by which in aid of that more copious source, captivity in war, our demand for slaves

The number of slaves carried from Africa in 1804, in ships cleared out from Great Britain, supposing their cargoes to have equalled, and not exceeded, the numbers limited by law, was 36,899. (See Sir W. Young's West India Common Place Book, page 8.) This account, however, comprises the slave ships trading under British colours only. If the British slave trade, carried on under American and Danish colours, prior to the act of last session, were included, the dreadful amount of the human victims immolated at the shrine of our national avarice, would be greatly enlarged.

is supplied; and while by the frequency of these crimes, man becomes to man a greater terror than the lion of the desert, to the destruction of all innocent commerce, and civil intercourse between individuals; frequent and dreadful wars are kindled between their petty states, for the sole purpose of obtaining captives to barter with our merchants, for the arms and luxuries of Europe.

Nor is war only increased in point of frequency; its horrid features are rendered far more dreadful, by the same detestable motive. Populous villages are beset at midnight, by armed bands, who after killing all that make resistance, carry off, to a more dreadful fate, such of their prisoners as are fit for servitude; leaving of course to perish, all who from age or infirmity, depended upon the more vigorous for support.

That this description of the sources of exportable slavery is strictly true, all who will take the trouble of reading the most decisive public evidence, may be fully convinced. Their effects on the state of manners and society in Africa may be easily conceived: and where man is made at once so wretched and so guilty, it may scarcely excite additional horror, to reflect what enormous and various destruction of human life, must directly or collaterally result, from the same detestable commerce. This murderous waste, however, is of far greater extent than the uninformed suppose. Many of the unhappy captives are brought to the shores of the Atlantic from very remote parts of the interior country; and in their way have extensive desarts to pass, where so many external hardships and sufferings are added to the anguish of their minds, that of those who originally set out for the coast, a great number perish miserably on the journey.*

Exportable slavery then, is not only the fruit of atrocious crimes, and exquisite wretchedness; but this fruit is not, and from the nature of the case cannot be, thriftily gathered. The hapless country, for every bondsman placed in the hold of a slave ship, is deprived of much more than a single life.

But a still further waste of human existence takes place in that foul prison itself. The mortality on the short passage which ensues, among persons chiefly in the prime of life, is by the last accounts equal to five in every hundred; even when the excesses of a blind and merciless avarice are controlled by the regulations of the acts made to limit the carrying trade.t

* Some truly shocking illustrations of this truth may be found in Mr. Park's travels.

† Sir W. Young's West India Common Place Book, p. 10.

1

Much greater proportions of the slaves which arrive in the West Indies, are confessedly brought to an untimely and speedy death, by the seasoning, or training to compulsory labour, in our islands;* and on the whole, it may fairly be calculated, that not less than three human beings are directly, or indirectly sacrificed in Africa, on the middle passage, and in the West Indies, in order to place a single *seasoned negro upon a sugar plantation.

Such is the murderous nature of this intercourse with Africa, which opprobriously to the character of commerce, is known by the name of the slave trade.

If we were to compute the homicides which it has produced since we first embarked in it, the amount would almost exceed credibility. Perhaps it would be no extravagant, though a horrible proposition, that a sword of divine vengeance which should utterly extirpate the whole population of England, would hardly exact more than life for life, for the innocent blood with which we are justly chargeable.†

* By a public document, in the possession of his majesty's ministers, it appears that in Trinidada a full moiety of between eight and nine thousand imported negroes had perished in two years. To enable the reader to conceive the complicated miseries which brought them to their end, it would be necessary to give much, and very shocking information, respecting the settlement of new

lands in the West Indies.

It is reported that a great number of Chinese have lately been carried, by whose procurement I know not, to that island. It is impossible here to expose the false views on which such an expedient to settle the new lands by free la bourers has been built; but I seize this opportunity to protest publicly against it, as a preposterous and cruel experiment.

† Mr. Edwards estimates the total import of negroes into the British colonies, from 1680 to 1786, at 2,130,000, but admits that this is much less than was commonly supposed; and it may, I conceive, be reasonably taken at three millions. In 1787 the importation was 21,023. (History of West Indies, vol. 2, book 4, chap. 2.) From 1795 to 1804, the numbers carried from Africa in British ships, were 380,893. (West India Common Place Book, page 8,) and these may be presumed to have been chiefly carried to colonies then in our possession; because our foreign slave trade was, during that period, chiefly carried on under American and other neutral colours.

I cannot immediately refer to any authentic information as to the state of the trade during the two fast years, or during the years from 1788 to 1794 inclusive; but as it has progressively increased during the last twenty years, it will be a very moderate estimate to take the importation in the years last preceding each of those periods, as the average of the whole. The importation in 1787, therefore, being 21,023, that in seven years to the end of 1794, was at least 147,151; and the importation of 1804 being 36,899, we must add 73,798 for the two last years.

It would be quite incompatible with the necessary limits of this

work, to state, even in the most summary manner, the dreadful op

How many of these have prematurely perished by the seasoning, or from the subsequent effects of West India slavery, cannot be ascertained; but we may guess at it from the following data. Mr. Edwards asserts, that from authentic lists of entries in his possession, there were imported into Jamaica, from 1700 to 1786, 610,000 negroes, and we can not suppose less than 100,000 to have been on the island at the commencement of that period. From 1786 to the end of 1792, the numbers imported, on the ordinary proportion which Jamaica has had of the whole British trade, could not be less than 30,000. These numbers together would give, supposing the births to equal the deaths, a population at the end of 1792 of 740,600 slaves; whereas Mr Edwards publishing in June 1793, estimated their numbers at 250,000, being less by 490,600, than the numbers imported; and even this, was near 40,000 more than the amount of the last poll tax returns. (See History of Jamaica, vol. i, book 2, chap. 5.) The loss, therefore, in this island, would be near two-thirds of the whole number imported, if it were not for a deduction that is due on account of the numbers re-exported; which Mr. Edwards estimates to have been in Jamaica, about one-fifth part of the import, Allowing, by this rule, 128,120 to have been re-exported, the loss will be reduced to 362,480, or nearly one half.

It may perhaps be objected, that in the long period here taken, a great proportion of the whole number imported, must have died, even under the mildest treatment, and under circumstances the more favourable to longevity; and that the calculation, therefore, for the most part, only proves that the births have not equalled the deaths.

But I answer first, that it is impossible to suppose the growth of native population to have been kept down by any means, that have not at the same time shortened the lives of the adults; especially considering how extremely prolific negroes are in other places, under far less favourable circumstances of climate and local situation. Secondly, that it is an error to suppose that the difference between the numbers imported, and the remaining population, constitutes the whole loss by mortality. On the contrary, the numbers of children, born and prematurely cut off, during so long a period, in an old settled island like Jamaica, may be fairly supposed to have much more than equalled the whole import. While we deduct then from the amount of a mortality produced by oppression among the parents, we must add to that which was produced by the same cause among the children.