The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) · Chapter 31Chapter XXVI. (1)
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—Continuation from July, 1790, to July, 1791.—Author travels again throughout the kingdom; object of his journey.—Motion in the House of Commons to resume the hearing of evidence in favour of the abolition; list of all those examined on this side of the question; machinations of interested persons, and cruel circumstances of the times previously to the day of decision.—Motion at length made for stopping all further importation of Slaves from Africa; debates upon it; motion lost.—Resolutions of the committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.—Establishment of the Sierra Leone Company.
It was a matter of deep affliction to us to think, that the crimes and sufferings inseparable from the Slave Trade were to be continued to another year. And yet it was our duty, in the present moment, to acquiesce in the postponement of the question. This postponement was not now for the purpose of delay, but of securing victory. The evidence, on the side of the abolition, was, at the end of the last session, but half finished. It was impossible, for the sake of Africa, that we could have then closed it. No other opportunity might offer in parliament for establishing an indelible record in her favour, if we were to neglect the present. It was our duty, therefore, even to wait to complete it, and to procure such a body of evidence, as should not only bear us out in the approaching contest, but such as, if we were to fail, would bear out our successors also. It was possible, indeed, if the inhabitants of our islands were to improve in civilization, that the poor slaves might experience gradually an improved treatment with it; and so far testimony now might not be testimony for ever; but it was utterly impossible, while the Slave Trade lasted, and the human passion continued to be the same, that there should be any change for the better in Africa; or that any modes, less barbarous, should come into use for procuring slaves. Evidence, therefore, if once collected on this subject, would be evidence for posterity. In the midst of these thoughts another journey occurred to me as necessary for this purpose; and I prayed, that I might have strength to perform it in the most effectual manner; and that I might be daily impressed, as I travelled along, with the stimulating thought, that the last hope for millions might possibly rest upon my own endeavours.
The committee highly approved of this journey; Mr. Wilberforce saw the absolute necessity of it also, and had prepared a number of questions, with great ingenuity, to be put to such persons as might have information to communicate. These I added to those in the tables, which have been already mentioned, and they made together a valuable collection on the subject.
This tour was the most vexatious of any I had yet undertaken; many still refused to come forward to be examined, and some on the most frivolous pretences, so that I was disgusted, as I journeyed on, to find how little men were disposed to make sacrifices for so great a cause. In one part of it I went over nearly two thousand miles, receiving repeated refusals; I had not secured one witness within this distance; this was truly disheartening. I was subject to the whims and caprice of those whom I solicited on these occasions[A]; to these I was obliged to accommodate myself. When at Edinburgh, a person who could have given me material information declined seeing me, though he really wished well to the cause; when I had returned southward as far as York, he changed his mind, and he would then see me; I went back that I might not lose him. When I arrived, he would give me only private information. Thus I travelled, backwards and forwards, four hundred miles to no purpose. At another place a circumstance almost similar happened, though with a different issue. I had been for two years writing about a person, whose testimony was important. I had passed once through the town in which he lived, but he would not then see me; I passed through it now, but no entreaties of his friends could make him alter his resolution. He was a man highly respectable as to situation in life, but of considerable vanity. I said therefore to my friend, on leaving the town, You may tell him that I expect to be at Nottingham in a few days, and though it be a hundred and fifty miles distant, I will even come back to see him if he will dine with me on my return. A letter from my friend announced to me, when at Nottingham, that his vanity had been so gratified by the thought of a person coming expressly to visit him from such a distance, that he would meet me according to my appointment; I went back; we dined together; he yielded to my request; I was now repaid, and I returned towards Nottingham in the night. These circumstances I mention, and I feel it right to mention them, that the reader may be properly impressed with the great difficulties we found in collecting a body of evidence in comparison with our opponents. They ought never to be forgotten; for if with the testimony, picked up as it were under all these disadvantages, we carried our object against those who had almost numberless witnesses to command, what must have been the merits of our cause! No person can indeed judge of the severe labour and trials in these journeys. In the present, I was out four months; I was almost over the whole island; I intersected it backwards and forwards both in the night and in the day; I travelled nearly seven thousand miles in this time, and I was able to count upon twenty new and willing evidences.
Having now accomplished my object, Mr. Wilberforce moved on the 4th of February in the House of Commons, that a committee be appointed to examine further witnesses in behalf of the abolition of the Slave Trade, This motion was no sooner made, than Mr. Cawthorne rose, to our great surprise, to oppose it. He took upon himself to decide that the House had heard evidence enough. This indecent motion was not without its advocates. Mr. Wilberforce set forth the injustice of this attempt, and proved, that out of eighty-one days which had been given up to the hearing of evidence, the witnesses against the abolition had occupied no less than fifty-seven. He was strenuously supported by Mr. Burke, Mr. Martin, and other respectable members. At length the debate ended in favour of the original motion, and a committee was appointed accordingly.
The examinations began again on February 7th, and continued till April 5th, when they were finally closed. In this, as in the former session, Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. William Smith principally conducted them; and indeed it was necessary that they should have been present at these times; for it is perhaps difficult to conceive the illiberal manner in which our witnesses were treated by those on the other side of the question. Men who had left the trade upon principle, and who had come forward, against their apparent interest, to serve the cause of humanity and justice, were looked upon as mercenaries and culprits, or as men of doubtful and suspicious character; they were brow-beaten; unhandsome questions were put to them; some were kept for four days under examination. It was however highly to their honour that they were found in no one instance to prevaricate, nor to waver as to the certainty of their facts.
But this treatment, hard as it was for them to bear, was indeed good for the cause; for, coming thus pure out of the fire, they occasioned their own testimony, when read, to bear stronger marks of truth than that of the generality of our opponents; nor was it less superior when weighed by other considerations. For the witnesses, against the abolition were principally interested; they, who were not, had been hospitably received at the planters' tables. The evidence, too, which they delivered, was almost wholly negative. They had not seen such and such evils; but this was no proof that the evils did not exist. The witnesses, on the other hand, who came up in favour of the abolition, had no advantage in making their several assertions. In some instances they came up against their apparent interest, and, to my knowledge, suffered persecution for so doing. The evidence also which they delivered was of a positive nature. They gave an account of specific evils, which had come under their own eyes; these evils were never disproved; they stood therefore on a firm basis, as on a tablet of brass. Engraved there in affirmative characters, a few of them were of more value than all the negative and airy testimony which had been advanced on the other side of the question.
That the public may judge, in some measure, of the respectability of the witnesses in favour of the abolition, and that they may know also to whom Africa is so much indebted for her deliverance, I shall subjoin their names in the three following lists. The first will contain those who were examined by the privy council only; the second those who were examined by the privy council and the House of Commons also; and the third those who were examined-by the House of Commons only.
LIST I.
Andrew Spaarman, physician, botanist, and successor to Linnaeus, traveller on discovery in Africa for the king of Sweden.
Rev. Isham Baggs, chaplain for two voyages to Africa in H.M. ship Grampus.
Captain James Bowen, of the royal navy, one voyage to Africa.
Mr. William James, a master in the royal navy, three voyages, as mate of a slave-vessel.
Mr. David Henderson, gunner of H.M. ship Centurion, three voyages to Africa.
Harry Gandy, two voyages to Africa, as captain of a slave-vessel.
Thomas Eldred, two voyages there, as mate.
James Arnold, three voyages there, as surgeon and surgeon's mate.
Thomas Deane, two voyages there, as captain of a wood and ivory ship.
LIST II.
Major-General Rooke, commander of Goree, in Africa.
Henry Hew Dalrymple, Esq., lieutenant of the 75th regiment at Goree, and afterwards in all the West Indian islands.
Thomas Willson, Esq., naval commander at Goree.
John Hills, Esq., captain of H.M. ship Zephyr, on the African station.
Sir George Yonge, two voyages as lieutenant, and two as captain, of a ship of war, on the African station.
Charles Berns Wadstrom, Esq., traveller on discovery in Africa for the King of Sweden.
Rev. John Newton, five voyages to Africa in a slave-vessel, and resident eighteen months there.
Captain John Ashley Hall, in the merchant service, two voyages in a slave-vessel as a mate.
Alexander Falconbridge, four voyages in a slave-vessel as surgeon and surgeon's mate.
Captain John Samuel Smith, of the royal navy, on the West India station.
LIST III.
Anthony Pantaleo How, Esq., employed by government as a botanist in Africa.
Sir Thomas Bolton Thompson, two voyages as a lieutenant, and two as commander of a ship of war on the African station.
Lieutenant John Simpson, of the marines, two voyages in a ship of war on the African station.
Lieutenant Richard Storey, of the royal navy, four years on the slave employ all over the coast.
Mr. George Miller, gunner of H.M. ship Pegase, one voyage in a slave-ship.
"Mr. James Morley, gunner of H.M. ship Medway, six voyages in a slave-ship.
Mr. Henry Ellison, gunner of H.M. ship Resistance, eleven years in the Slave Trade.
Mr. James Towne, carpenter of H.M. ship Syren, two voyages in a slave-ship.
Mr. John Douglas, boatswain of H.M. ship Russell, one voyage in a slave-ship.
Mr. Isaac Parker, shipkeeper of H.M. ship Melampus, two voyages in a slaveship.
Thomas Trotter, Esq., M.D., one voyage as surgeon of a slave-ship.
Mr. Isaac Wilson, one voyage as surgeon of a slave-ship.
Mr. Ecroyde Claxton, one voyage as surgeon of a slave-ship.
James Kiernan, Esq., resident four years on the banks of the Senegal.
Mr. John Bowman, eleven years in the slave-employ as mate, and as a factor in the interior of Africa.
Mr. William Dove, one voyage for slaves, and afterwards resident in America.
Major-General Tottenham, two years resident in the West Indies.
Captain Giles, 19th regiment, seven years quartered in the West Indies.
Captain Cook, 89th regiment, two years quartered in the West Indies.
Lieutenant Baker Davison, 79th regiment, twelve years quartered in the West Indies.
Captain Hall, of the royal navy, five years on the West India station.
Captain Thomas Lloyd, of the royal navy, one year on the West India station.
Captain Alexander Scott, of the royal navy, one voyage to Africa and the West Indies.
Mr. Ninian Jeffreys, a master in the royal navy, five years mate of a West Indiaman, and for two years afterwards in the islands in a ship-of-war.
Rev. Thomas Gwynn Rees, chaplain of H.M. ship Princess Amelia, in the West Indies.
Rev. Robert Boucher Nicholls, dean of Middleham, many years resident in the West Indies.
Hercules Ross, Esq., twenty-one years a merchant in the West Indies.
Mr. Thomas Clappeson, fifteen years in the West Indies as a wharfinger and pilot.
Mr. Mark Cook, sixteen years in the West Indies, first in the planting business, and then as clerk and schoolmaster.
Mr. Henry Coor, a millwright for fifteen years in the West Indies.
Rev. Mr. Davies, resident fourteen years in the West Indies.
Mr. William Duncan, four years in the West Indies, first as a clerk, and then as an overseer.
Mr. William Fitzmaurice, fifteen years, first as a book-keeper, and then as an overseer, in the West Indies.
Mr. Robert Forster, six years first in a store, then as second master and pilot of a ship-of-war in the West Indies.
Mr. Robert Ross, twenty-four years, first as a book-keeper, then as an overseer, and afterwards as a planter, in the West Indies.
Mr. John Terry, fourteen years an overseer or manager in the West Indies.
Mr. Matthew Terry, twelve years resident, first as a book-keeper and overseer, then as a land-surveyor in the king's service, and afterwards as a colony surveyor, in the West Indies.
George Woodward, Esq., an owner and mortgagee of property, and occasionally a resident in the West Indies.
Mr. Joseph Woodward, three years resident in the West Indies.
Henry Botham, Esq., a director of sugar-works both in the East and West Indies.
Mr. John Giles, resident twelve years in the West Indies and America.
J. Harrison, Esq., M.D., twenty-three years resident, in the medical line, in the West Indies and America.
Robert Jackson, Esq., M.D., four years resident in the West Indies in the medical line, after which he joined his regiment, in the same profession, in America.
Thomas Woolrich, Esq., twenty years a merchant in the West Indies, but in the interim was twice in America.
Rev. James Stuart, two years in the West Indies, and twenty in America.
George Baillie, Esq., one year in the West Indies, and twenty-five in America.
William Beverley, Esq., eighteen years in America.
John Clapham, Esq., twenty years in America.
Robert Crew, Esq., a native of America, and long resident there.
John Savage, Esq., forty-six years resident in America.
The evidence having been delivered on both sides, and then printed, it was judged expedient by Mr. Wilberforce, seeing that it filled three folio volumes, to abridge it. This abridgement was made by the different friends of the cause. William Burgh, Esq., of York; Thomas Babington, Esq., of Rothley Temple; the Rev. Thomas Gisborne, of Yoxall Lodge; Mr. Campbell Haliburton, of Edinburgh; George Harrison, with one or two others of the committee, and myself, were employed upon it. The greater share, however, of the labour, fell upon Dr. Dickson. That no misrepresentation of any person's testimony might be made, Matthew Montagu, Esq., and the Honourable E.J. Elliott, members of Parliament, undertook to compare the abridged manuscripts with the original text, and to strike out or correct whatever they thought to be erroneous, and to insert whatever they thought to have been omitted. The committee for the abolition, when the work was finished, printed it at their own expense, Mr. Wilberforce then presented it to the House of Commons, as a faithful abridgement of the whole evidence. Having been received as such, under the guarantee of Mr. Montague and Mr. Elliott, the committee sent it to every individual member of that House.
The book having been thus presented, and a day fixed for the final determination of the question, our feelings became almost insupportable; for we had the mortification to find, that our cause was going down in estimation, where it was then most important that it should have increased in favour. Our opponents had taken advantage of the long delay which the examination of evidence had occasioned, to prejudice the minds of many of the members of the House of Commons against us. The old arguments of emancipation, massacre, ruin, and indemnification, had been kept up; but, as the day of final decision approached, they had been increased. Such was our situation at this moment, when the current was turned still more powerfully against us by the peculiar circumstances of the times. It was, indeed, the misfortune of this great cause to be assailed by every weapon which could be turned against it. At this time, Thomas Paine had published his Rights of Man. This had been widely circulated. At this time, also, the French revolution had existed nearly two years. The people of England had seen, during this interval, a government as it were dissected. They had seen an old constitution taken down, and a new one put up, piece by piece, in its stead. The revolution, therefore, in conjunction with the book in question, had had the effect of producing dissatisfaction among thousands; and this dissatisfaction was growing, so as to alarm a great number of persons of property in the kingdom, as well as the government itself. Now will it be believed that our opponents had the injustice to lay hold of these circumstances, at this critical moment, to give a death-blow to the cause of the abolition? They represented the committee, though it had existed before the French revolution, or the Rights of Man were heard of, as a nest of Jacobins; and they held up the cause, sacred as it was, and though it had the support of the minister, as affording an opportunity of meeting for the purpose of overthrowing the state. Their cry succeeded. The very book of the abridgment of the evidence was considered by many members as poisonous as that of the Rights of Man. It was too profane for many of them to touch; and they who discarded it, discarded the cause also.
But these were not the only circumstances which were used as means, at this critical moment, to defeat us. News of the revolution, which had commenced in St. Domingo, in consequence of the disputes between the whites and the people of colour, had, long before this, arrived in England. The horrible scenes which accompanied it, had been frequently published as so many arguments against our cause. In January, new insurrections were announced as having happened in Martinique. The negroes there were described as armed, and the planters as having abandoned their estates for fear of massacre. Early in the month of March, insurrections in the smaller French islands were reported. Every effort was then made to represent these as the effects of the new principles of liberty, and of the cry for abolition. But what should happen, just at this moment, to increase the clamour against us? Nothing less than an insurrection in Dominica.—Yes!—An insurrection in a British island. This was the very event for our opponents. "All the predictions of the planters had now become verified. The horrible massacres were now realizing at home." To give this news still greater effect, a meeting of our opponents was held at the London Tavern. By a letter read there, it appeared that "the ruin of Dominica was now at hand." Resolutions were voted, and a memorial presented to government, "immediately to despatch such a military force to the different islands, as might preserve the whites from destruction, and keep the negroes in subjection during the present critical state of the slave bill." This alarm was kept up till the 7th of April, when another meeting took place, to receive the answer of government to the memorial. It was there resolved that, "as it was too late to send troops to the islands, the best way of preserving them would be to bring the question of the Slave Trade to an immediate issue; and that it was the duty of the government, if they regarded the safety of the islands, to oppose the abolition of it." Accounts of all these proceedings were inserted in the public papers. It is needless to say that they were injurious to our cause. Many looked upon the abolitionists as monsters. They became also terrified themselves. The idea with these was, that unless the discussion on this subject was terminated, all would be lost. Thus, under a combination of effects, arising from the publication of the Rights of Man, the rise and progress of the French revolution, and the insurrections of the negroes in the different islands, no one of which events had anything to do with the abolition of the Slave Trade, the current was turned against us; and in this unfavourable frame of mind many members of parliament went into the House, on the day fixed for the discussion, to discharge their duty with respect to this great question.
On the 18th of April, Mr. Wilberforce made his motion. He began by expressing a hope, that the present debate, instead of exciting asperity and confirming prejudice, would tend to produce a general conviction of the truth of what in fact was incontrovertible; that the abolition of the Slave Trade was indispensably required of them, not only by morality and religion, but by sound policy. He stated that he should argue the matter from evidence. He adverted to the character, situation, and means of information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives of Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following manner:—
He would begin, he said, with the first boundary of the trade. Captain Wilson and Captain Hills, of His Majesty's navy, and Mr. Dalrymple, of the land service, had concurred in stating, that in the country contiguous to the river Senegal, when slave-ships arrived there, armed parties were regularly sent out in the evening, who scoured the country, and brought in their prey. The wretched victims were to be seen in the morning bound back to back in the huts on shore, whence they were conveyed, tied hand and foot, to the slave-ships. The design of these ravages was obvious, because, when the Slave Trade was stopped, they ceased. Mr. Kiernan spoke of the constant depredations by the Moors to procure slaves. Mr. Wadstrom confirmed them. The latter gentleman showed also that they were excited by presents of brandy, gunpowder, and such other incentives; and that they were not only carried on by one community against another, but that the kings were stimulated to practise them in their territories, and on their own subjects: and in one instance a chieftain, who, when intoxicated, could not resist the demands of the slave merchants, had expressed, in a moment of reason, a due sense of his own crime, and had reproached his Christian seducers. Abundant also were the instances of private rapine. Individuals were kidnapped, whilst in their fields and gardens. There was an universal feeling of distrust and apprehension there. The natives never went any distance from home without arms; and when Captain Wilson asked them the reason of it, they pointed to a slave-ship then lying within sight.
On the windward coast, it appeared from Lieutenant Story and Mr. Bowman, that the evils just mentioned existed, if possible, in a still higher degree. They had seen the remains of villages, which had been burnt, whilst the fields of corn were still standing beside them, and every other trace of recent desolation. Here an agent was sent to establish a settlement in the country, and to send to the ships such slaves as he might obtain. The orders he received from his captain were, that "he was to encourage the chieftains by brandy and gunpowder to go to war, to make slaves." This he did. The chieftains performed their part in return. The neighbouring villages were surrounded and set on fire in the night. The inhabitants were seized when making their escape; and, being brought to the agent, were by him forwarded to his principal on the coast. Mr. How, a botanist in the service of Government, stated, that on the arrival of an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, while he was there, a native chief immediately sent forth armed parties, who brought in a supply of all descriptions in the night.
But he would now mention one or two instances of another sort, and these merely on account of the conclusion, which was to be drawn from them. When Captain Hills was in the river Gambia, he mentioned accidentally to a Black pilot, who was in the boat with him, that he wanted a cabin-boy. It so happened that some youths were then on the shore with vegetables to sell. The pilot beckoned to them to come on board; at the same time giving Captain Hills to understand, that he might take his choice of them; and when Captain Hills rejected the proposal with indignation, the pilot seemed perfectly at a loss to account for his warmth; and drily observed, that the slave-captains would not have been so scrupulous. Again, when General Rooke commanded at Goree, a number of the natives, men, women, and children, came to pay him a friendly visit. All was gaiety and merriment. It was a scene to gladden the saddest, and to soften the hardest, heart. But a slave-captain was not so soon thrown off his guard. Three English barbarians of this description had the audacity jointly to request the general, to seize the whole unsuspicious multitude and sell them. For this they alleged the precedent of a former governor. Was not this request a proof of the frequency of such acts of rapine? for how familiar must such have been to slave-captains, when three of them dared to carry a British officer of rank such a flagitious proposal! This would stand in the place of a thousand instances. It would give credibility to every other act of violence stated in the evidence, however enormous it might appear.
But he would now have recourse for a moment to circumstantial evidence. An adverse witness, who had lived on the Gold Coast, had said that the only way in which children could he enslaved, was by whole families being sold when the principals had been condemned for witchcraft. But he said at the same time, that few were convicted of this crime, and that the younger part of a family in these cases was sometimes spared. But if this account were true, it would follow that the children in the slave-vessels would be few indeed. But it had been proved, that the usual proportion of these was never less than a fourth of the whole cargo on the coast, and also, that the kidnapping of children was very prevalent there.
All these atrocities, he said, were fully substantiated by the evidence; and here he should do injustice to his cause, if he were not to make a quotation from the speech of Mr. B. Edwards in the Assembly of Jamaica, who, though he was hostile to his propositions, had yet the candour to deliver himself in the following manner there. "I am persuaded," says he, "that Mr. Wilberforce has been rightly informed as to the manner in which slaves are generally procured. The intelligence I have collected from my own negroes abundantly confirms his account; and I have not the smallest doubt, that in Africa the effects of this trade are precisely such as he has represented them. The whole, or the greatest part, of that immense continent is a field of warfare and desolation; a wilderness, in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other. That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the Slave Trade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the Sugar Islands may be convinced that it is so, who will enquire of any African negroes, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity. The assertion that it is otherwise, is mockery and insult."
But it was not only by acts of outrage that the Africans were brought into bondage. The very administration of justice was turned into an engine for that end. The smallest offence was punished by a fine equal to the value of a slave. Crimes were also fabricated; false accusations were resorted to; and persons were sometimes employed to seduce the unwary into practices with a view to the conviction and the sale of them.
It was another effect of this trade, that it corrupted the morals of those who carried it on. Every fraud was used to deceive the ignorance of the natives by false weights and measures, adulterated commodities, and other impositions of a like sort. These frauds were even acknowledged by many who had themselves practised them, in obedience to the orders of their superiors. For the honour of the mercantile character of the country, such a traffic ought immediately to be suppressed.