The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) · Chapter 34Chapter XXVI. (4)
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An honourable member had asked on a former day, "Is it an excuse for robbery to say that another would hare committed it?" But the Slave Trade did not necessarily imply robbery. Not long since Great Britain sold her convicts, indirectly at least, to slavery; but he was no advocate for the trade. He wished it had begun, and that it might soon terminate. But the means were not adequate to the end proposed.
Mr. Burke had said on a former occasion, "that in adopting measure we must prepare to pay the price of our virtue." He was ready to pay his share of that price; but the effect of the purchase must be first ascertained. If they did not estimate this, it was not benevolence, but dissipation. Effects were to be duly appreciated; and though statesmen might rest everything on a manifesto of causes, the humbler moralist, meditating peace and good will towards men, would venture to call such statesmen responsible for consequences.
In regard to the colonies, a sudden abolition would be oppression. The legislatures there should be led, and not forced, upon this occasion. He was persuaded they would act wisely to attain the end pointed out to them. They would see that a natural increase of their negroes might be effected by an improved system of legislation; and that in the result the Slave Trade would be no longer necessary.
A sudden abolition, also, would occasion dissatisfaction there. Supplies were necessary for some time to come. The negroes did not yet generally increase by birth. The gradation of ages was not yet duly filled. These and many defects might be remedied, but not suddenly.
It would cause, also, distress there. The planters, not having their expected supplies, could not discharge their debts; hence their slaves would be seized and sold. Nor was there any provision in this case against the separation of families, except as to the mother and infant child. These separations were one of the chief outrages complained of in Africa. Why, then, should we promote them in the West Indies? The confinement on board a slave-ship had been also bitterly complained of; but, under distraint for the debt of a master, the poor slave might linger in a gaol twice or thrice the time of the Middle Passage.
He again stated his abhorrence of the Slave Trade; but as a resource, though he hoped but a temporary one, it was of such consequence to the existence of the country, that it could not suddenly be withdrawn. The value, of the imports and exports between Great Britain and the West Indies, including the excise and customs, was between seven and eight millions annually; and the tonnage of the ships employed about an eighth of the whole tonnage of these kingdoms.
He complained that in the evidence the West Indian planters had been by no means spared. Cruel stories had been hastily and lightly told against them. Invidious comparisons had been made to their detriment; but it was well known that one of our best comic writers, when he wished to show benevolence in its fairest colours, had personified it in the character of the West Indian. He wished the slave might become as secure as the apprentice in this country; but it was necessary that the alarms concerning the abolition of the Slave Trade should, in the mean time, be quieted; and he trusted that the good sense and true benevolence of the House would reject the present motion.
Mr. Matthew Montagu rose and said a few words in support of the motion; and after condemning the trade in the strongest manner, he declared, that as long as he had life he would use every faculty of his body and mind in endeavouring to promote its abolition.
Lord John Russell succeeded Mr. Montagu. He said, that although slavery was repugnant to his feelings, he must vote against the abolition as visionary and delusive. It was a feeble attempt, without the power, to serve the cause of humanity. Other nations would take up the trade. Whenever a bill of wise regulation should be brought forward, no man would be more ready than himself to lend his support. In this way the rights of humanity might be asserted without injury to others. He hoped he should not incur censure by his vote; for, let his understanding be what it might, he did not know that he had, notwithstanding the assertions of Mr. Fox, an inaccessible heart.
Mr. Stanley (agent for the islands) rose next. He felt himself called upon, he said, to refute the many calumnies which had for years been propagated against the planters, (even through the medium of the pulpit, which should have been employed to better purposes,) and which had at length produced the mischievous measure, which was now under the discussion of the House. A cry had been sounded forth, and from one end of the kingdom to the other, as if there had never been a slave from Adam to the present time. But it appeared to him to have been the intention of Providence, from the very beginning, that one set of men should be slaves to another. This truth was as old as it was universal. It was recognised in every history, under every government, and in every religion. Nor did the Christian religion itself if the comments of Dr. Halifax, Bishop of Gloucester, on a passage of St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians were true, show more repugnance to slavery than any other.
He denied that the slaves were procured in the manner which had been described. It was the custom of all savages to kill their prisoners; and the Africans ought to be thankful that they had been carried safe into the British colonies.
As to the tales of misery in the Middle Passage, they were gross falsehoods; and as to their treatment in the West Indies, he knew personally that it was, in general, indulgent and humane.
With regard to promoting their increase by any better mode of treatment, he wished gentlemen would point it out to him. As a planter he would thank them for it. It was absurd to suppose that he and others were blind to their own interest. It was well known that one Creole slave was worth two Africans; and their interest, therefore, must suggest to them, that the propagation of slaves was preferable to the purchase of imported negroes, of whom one half very frequently died in the seasoning.
He then argued the impossibility of beasts doing the work of the plantations. He endeavoured to prove that the number of these adequate to this purpose could not be supplied with food; and after having made many other observations, which, on account of the lowness of his voice, could not be heard, he concluded by objecting to the motion.
Mr. William Smith rose. He wondered how the last speaker could have had the boldness to draw arguments from scripture in support of the Slave Trade. Such arguments could be intended only to impose on those who never took the trouble of thinking for themselves. Could it be thought for a moment, that the good sense of the House could be misled by a few perverted or misapplied passages, in direct opposition to the whole tenor, and spirit of Christianity; to the theory, he might say, of almost every religion, which had ever appeared in the world? Whatever might have been advanced, every body must feel that the Slave Trade could not exist an hour, if that excellent maxim, "to do to others as we would wish that others should do to us," had its proper influence on the conduct of men.
Nor was Mr. Stanley more happy in his argument of the antiquity and universality of slavery. Because a practise had existed, did it necessarily follow that it was just? By this argument every crime might be defended from the time of Cain. The slaves of antiquity, however were in a situation far preferable to that of the negroes in the West Indies. A passage in Macrobius, which exemplified this in the strongest manner, was now brought to his recollection. "Our ancestors," says Macrobius, "denominated the master, father of the family, and the slave, domestic, with the intention of removing all odium from the condition of the master, and all contempt from that of the servant." Could this language be applied to the present state of West India slavery?
It had been complained of by those who supported the trade, that they laboured under great disadvantages by being obliged to contend against the most splendid abilities which the House could boast. But he believed they laboured under one, which was worse and for which no talents could compensate; he meant the impossibility of maintaining their ground fairly on any of those principles, which every man within those walls had been accustomed, from his infancy, to venerate as sacred. He and his friends, too, laboured under some disadvantages. They had been charged with fanaticism. But what had Mr. Long said, when he addressed himself to those planters, who were desirous of attempting improvements on their estates? He advised them "not to be diverted by partial views, vulgar prejudices, or the ridicule which might spring from weak minds, from a benevolent attention to the public good." But neither by these nor by other charges were he or his friends to be diverted from the prosecution of their purpose. They were convinced of the rectitude and high importance of their object; and were determined never to desist from pursuing it, till it should be attained.
But they had to struggle with difficulties far more serious. The West Indian interest which opposed them, was a collected body; of great power, affluence, connexions, and respectability.
Artifice had also been employed. Abolition and emancipation had been so often confounded, and by those who knew better, that it must have been purposely done, to throw an odium on the measure which was now before them.
The abolitionists had been also accused as the authors of the late insurrection in Dominica. A revolt had certainly taken place in that island. But revolts there had occured frequently before. Mr. Stanley himself, in attempting to fix this charge upon them, had related circumstance which amounted to their entire exculpation. He had said that all was quiet there till the disturbances in the French islands; when some negroes from the latter had found their way to Dominica, and had excited the insurrection in question. He had also said, that the negroes in our own islands hated the idea of the abolition; for they thought, as no new labourers were to come in, they should be subjected to increased hardships. But if they and their masters hated this same measure, how was this coincidence of sentiment to give birth to insurrections?
Other fallacies, also, had been industriously propogated. Of the African trade, it had been said, that the exports amounted to a million annually; whereas, from the report on the table, it had on an average amounted to little more than half a million; and this included the articles for the purchase of African produce which were of the value of 140,000l.
The East Indian Trade, also, had been said to depend on the West Indian and the African. In the first place, it had but very little connexion with the former at all. Its connexion with the latter was principally on account of the saltpetre which it furnished for making gunpowder. Out of nearly three millions of pounds in weight of the latter article, which had been exported in a year from this country, one-half had been sent to Africa alone; for the purposes, doubtless, of maintaining peace, and encouraging civilization among its various tribes! Four or five thousand persons were said, also, to depend for their bread in manufacturing guns for the African trade; and these, it was pretended, could not make guns of another sort.—But where lay the difficulty?—One of the witnesses had unravelled it. He had seen the negroes maimed by the bursting of these guns. They killed more from the butt than from the muzzle. Another had stated, that on the sea-coast the natives were afraid to fire a trade-gun.
In the West Indian commerce, two hundred and forty thousand tons of shipping were stated to be employed. But here deception intruded itself again. This statement included every vessel, great and small, which went from the British West Indies to America, and to the foreign islands; and what was yet more unfair, all the repeated voyages of each throughout the year. The shipping, which could only fairly be brought into this account, did but just exceed half that which had been mentioned.
In a similar manner had the islands themselves been overrated. Their value had been computed, for the information of the privy council, at thirty-six millions; but the planters had estimated them at seventy. The truth, however, might possibly lie between these extremes. He by no means wished to depreciate their importance; but he did not like that such palpable misrepresentations should go unnoticed.
An honourable member (Colonel Tarleton) had disclaimed every attempt to interest the feelings of those present, but had desired to call them to reason and accounts. He also desired (though it was a question of feeling, if any one ever was,) to draw the attention of the committee to reason and accounts—to the voice of reason instead of that of prejudice, and to accounts in the place of idle apprehensions. The result, he doubted not, would be a full persuasion, that policy and justice were inseparable upon this, as upon every other occasion.
The same gentleman had enlarged on the injustice of depriving the Liverpool merchants of a business, on which were founded their honour and their fortunes. On what part of it they founded their honour he could not conjecture, except from those passages in the evidence, where it appeared, that their agents in Africa had systematically practised every fraud and villany, which the meanest and most unprincipled cunning could suggest, to impose on the ignorance of those with whom they traded.
The same gentleman had also lamented, that the evidence had not been taken upon oath. He himself lamented it too. Numberless facts had been related by eye-witnesses, called in support of the abolition, so dreadfully atrocious, that they appeared incredible; and seemed rather, to use the expression of Ossian, like "the histories of the days of other times." These procured for the trade a species of acquittal, which it could not have obtained, had the committee been authorised to administer an oath. He apprehended, also, in this case, that some other persons would have been rather more guarded in their testimony. Captain Knox would not then perhaps have told the committee, that six hundred slaves could have had comfortable room at night in his vessel of about one hundred and forty tons; when there could have been no more than five feet six inches in length, and fifteen inches in breadth, to about two-thirds of his number.
The same gentleman had also dwelt upon the Slave Trade as a nursery for seamen. But it had appeared by the muster-rolls of the slave-vessels, then actually on the table of the house, that more than a fifth of them died in the service, exclusive of those who perished when discharged in the West Indies; and yet he had been instructed by his constituents to maintain this false position. His reasoning, too, was very curious; for, though numbers might die, yet as one half who entered were landsmen, seamen were continually forming. Not to dwell on the expensive cruelty of forming these seamen by the yearly destruction of so many hundreds, this very statement was flatly contradicted by the evidence. The muster-rolls from Bristol stated the proportion of landsmen in the trade there at one twelfth, and the proper officers of Liverpool itself at but a sixteenth of the whole employed. In the face again of the most glaring facts, others had maintained that the mortality in these vessels did not exceed that of other trades in the tropical climates. But the same documents, which proved that twenty-three per cent were destroyed in this wasting traffic, proved that in West India ships only about one and a half per cent were lost, including every casualty. But the very men, under whose management this dreadful mortality had been constantly occurring, had coolly said, that much of it might be avoided by proper regulations. How criminal then were they, who, knowing this, had neither publicly proposed, nor in their practice adopted, a remedy!
The average loss of the slaves on board, which had been calculated by Mr. Wilberforce at twelve and a half per cent., had been denied. He believed this calculation, taking in all the circumstances connected with it, to be true; but that for years not less than one-tenth had so perished, he would challenge those concerned in the traffic to disprove. Much evidence had been produced on the subject; but the voyages had been generally selected. There was only one who had disclosed the whole account. This was Mr. Anderson of London, whose engagements in this trade had been very inconsiderable. His loss had only amounted to three per cent.; but, unfortunately for the slave-traders of Liverpool, his vessel had not taken above three-fourths of that number in proportion to the tonnage which they had stated to be necessary to the very existence of their trade.
An honourable member (Mr. Grosvenor) had attributed the protraction of this business to those who had introduced it. But from whom did the motion for further evidence (when that of the privy council was refused) originate, but from the enemies of the abolition? The same gentleman had said, it was impossible to abolish the trade; but where was the impossibility of forbidding the further importation of slaves into our own colonies? and beyond this the motion did not extend.
The latter argument had also been advanced by Sir William Yonge and others. But allowing it its full force, would there be no honour in the dereliction of such a commerce? Would it be nothing publicly to recognise great and just principles? Would our example be nothing!—Yes: every country would learn, from our experiment, that American colonies could be cultivated without the necessity of continual supplies equally expensive and disgraceful.
But we might do more than merely lay down principles or propose examples. We might, in fact, diminish the evil itself immediately by no inconsiderable part,—by the whole of our own supply; and here he could not at all agree with the honourable baronet, in what seemed to him a commercial paradox, that the taking away from an open trade by far the largest customer, and the lessening of the consumption of the article, would increase both the competition and the demand, and of course all those mischiefs, which it was their intention to avert.
That the civilization of the Africans was promoted, as had been asserted, by their intercourse with the Europeans, was void of foundation, as had appeared from the evidence. In manners and dishonesty they had indeed assimilated with those who frequented their coasts. But the greatest industry and the least corruption of morals were in the interior, where they were out of the way of this civilizing connexion.
To relieve Africa from famine, was another of the benign reasons which had been assigned for continuing the trade. That famines had occurred there, he did not doubt; but that they should annually occur, and with such arithmetical exactness as to suit the demands of the Slave Trade, was a circumstance most extraordinary; so wonderful, indeed, that, could it once be proved, he should consider it as a far better argument in favour of the divine approbation of that trade, than any which had ever yet been produced.
As to the effect of the abolition on the West Indies, it would give weight to every humane regulation which had been made; by substituting a certain and obvious interest, in the place of one depending upon chances and calculation. An honourable member (Mr. Stanley) had spoken of the impossibility of cultivating the estates there without further importations of negroes; and yet, of all the authorities he had brought to prove his case, there was scarcely one which might not be pressed to serve more or less effectually against him. Almost every planter he had named had found his negroes increase under the good treatment he had professed to give them; and it was an axiom, throughout the whole evidence, that, wherever they were well used, importations were not necessary. It had been said, indeed, by some adverse witnesses, that in Jamaica all possible means had been used to keep up the stock by breeding; but how preposterous was this, when it was allowed that the morals of the slaves had been totally neglected, and that the planters preferred buying a larger proportion of males than females!
The misfortune was, that prejudice, and not reason, was the enemy to be subdued. The prejudices of the West Indians on these points were numerous and inveterate. Mr. Long himself had characterised them on this account, in terms which he should have felt diffident in using. But Mr. Long had shown his own prejudices also: for he justified the chaining of the Negroes on board the slave-vessels, on account of "their bloody, cruel, and malicious dispositions." But hear his commendation of some of the Aborigines of Jamaica, "who had miserably perished in caves, whither they had retired to escape the tyranny of the Spaniards. These," says he, "left a glorious monument of their having disdained to survive the loss of their liberty and their country." And yet this same historian could not perceive that this natural love of liberty might operate as strongly and as laudably in the African Negro, as in the Indian of Jamaica.
He was concerned to acknowledge that these prejudices were yet further strengthened by resentment against those who had taken an active part in the abolition of the Slave Trade. But it was never the object of these to throw a stigma on the whole body of the West Indians; but to prove the miserable effects of the trade. This it was their duty to do; and if, in doing this, disgraceful circumstances had come out, it was not their fault; and it must never be forgotten that they were true.
That the slaves were exposed to great misery in the islands, was true as well from inference as from facts: for what might not be expected from the use of arbitrary power, where the three characters of party, judge, and executioner were united! The slaves, too, were more capable on account of their passions, than the beasts in the field, of exciting the passions of their tyrants. To what a length the ill-treatment of them might be carried, might be learnt from, the instance which General Tottenham mentioned to have seen in the year 1780 in the streets of Bridge Town, Barbados: "A youth about nineteen (to use his own words in the evidence), entirely naked, with an iron collar about his neck, having five long projecting spikes. His body both before and behind was covered with wounds. His belly and thighs were almost cut to pieces, with running ulcers all over them; and a finger might have been laid in some of the weals. He could not sit down, because his hinder part was mortified; and it was impossible for him to lie down, on account of the prongs of his collar." He supplicated the General for relief. The latter asked who had punished him so dreadfully? The youth answered, his master had done it. And because he could not work, this same master, in the same spirit of perversion, which extorts from Scripture a justification of the Slave Trade, had fulfilled the apostolic maxim, that he should have nothing to eat. The use he meant to make of this instance was to show the unprotected state of the slaves. What must it be, where such an instance could pass not only unpunished, but almost unregarded! If, in the streets of London, but a dog were to be seen lacerated like this miserable man, how would the cruelty of the wretch be execrated, who had thus even abused a brute!
The judicial punishments also inflicted upon the Negro showed the low estimation, in which, in consequence of the strength of old customs and deep-rooted prejudices, they were held. Mr. Edwards, in his speech to the Assembly at Jamaica, stated the following case, as one which had happened in one of the rebellions there. Some slaves surrounded the dwelling-house of their mistress. She was in bed with a lovely infant. They deliberated upon the means of putting her to death in torment. But in the end one of them reserved her for his mistress; and they killed her infant with an axe before her face. "Now," says Mr. Edwards, (addressing himself to his audience) "you will think that no torments were too great for such horrible excesses. Nevertheless I am of a different opinion. I think that death, unaccompanied with cruelty, should be the utmost exertion of human authority over our unhappy fellow-creatures." Torments, however, were always inflicted in these cases. The punishment was gibbeting alive, and exposing the delinquents to perish by the gradual effects of hunger, thirst, and parching sun; in which situation they were known to suffer for nine days, with a fortitude scarcely credible, never uttering a single groan. But horrible as the excesses might have been, which occasioned these punishments, it must be remembered, that they were committed by ignorant savages, who had been dragged from all they held most dear; whose patience had been exhausted by a cruel and loathsome confinement during their transportation; and whose resentment had been wound up to the highest pitch of fury by the lash of the driver.
But he would now mention another instance, by way of contrast, out of the evidence. A child on board a slave-ship, of about ten months old, took sulk and would not eat. The captain flogged it with a cat; swearing that he would make it eat, or kill it. From this and other ill-treatment the child's legs swelled. He then ordered some water to be made hot to abate the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel; for the cook, on putting his hand into the water, said it was too hot. Upon this the captain swore at him, and ordered the feet to be put in. This was done. The nails and skin came off. Oiled cloths were then put round them. The child was at length tied to a heavy log. Two or three days afterwards, the captain caught it up again; and repeated that he would made it eat, or kill it. He immediately flogged it again, and in a quarter of an hour it died. But, after the child was dead, whom should the barbarian select to throw it overboard, but the wretched mother? In vain she started from the office. He beat her, till he made her take up the child and carry it to the side of the vessel. She then dropped it into the sea, turning her head the other way that she might not see it. Now it would naturally be asked, was not this captain also gibbeted alive? Alas! although the execrable barbarity of the European exceeded that of the Africans before mentioned, almost as much as his opportunities of instruction has been greater than theirs, no notice whatsoever was taken of this horrible action; and a thousand similar cruelties had been committed in this abominable trade with equal impunity: but he would say no more. He would vote for the abolition, not only as it would do away all the evils complained of in Africa and the Middle Passage; but as it would be the most effectual means of ameliorating the condition of those unhappy persons, who were still to continue slaves in the British colonies.
Mr. Courtenay rose. He said, he could not but consider the assertion of Sir William Yonge as a mistake, that the Slave Trade, if abandoned by us, would fall into the hands of France. It ought to be recollected, with what approbation the motion for abolishing it, made by the late Mirabeau, had been received; although the situation of the French colonies might then have presented obstacles to carrying the measure into immediate execution. He had no doubt, if parliament were to begin, so wise and enlightened a body as the National Assembly would follow the example. But even if France were not to relinquish the trade, how could we, if justice required its abolition, hesitate as to our part of it?
The trade, it had been said, was conducted upon the principles of humanity. Yes: we rescued the Africans from what we were pleased to call their wretched situation in their own; country, and then we took credit for our humanity; because, after having killed one half of them in the seasoning, we substituted what we were again pleased to call a better treatment than that which they would have experienced at home.
It had been stated that the principle of war among savages was a general massacre. This was not true. They frequently adopted the captives into their own families; and, so far from massacring the women and children, they often gave them the protection which the weakness of their age and sex demanded.
There could be no doubt, that the practice of kidnapping; prevailed in Africa. As to witchcraft, it had been made a crime in the reign of James the First in this country, for the purpose of informations; and how much more likely were informations to take place in Africa, under the encouragement afforded by the Slave Trade! This trade, it had been said, was sanctioned by twenty-six acts of parliament. He did not doubt but fifty-six might be found, by which parliament had sanctioned witchcraft of the existence of which we had now no belief whatever....