force, (6 as the Bible informs us, (Exod. xii. 36.) plundered their masters, the Egyptians, of jewels of silver, and jew els of gold, and raiment. Was their conduct criminal? No: it was meritorious. It was done in obedience to the distinct command of God himself. (Exod. xi. 2.) There can, therefore, no criminality attach to us for having stripped you of your property."

We defy the man-merchants, or their most religious advocate, to make out a case from scripture in favour of the slave trade, stronger than either of these which we have now adduced. And yet, as the commercial wealth of Great Britain will not seem to Britannicus to be involved in them, even he may be able to perceive the absurdity of the reasoning by which they are supported. But let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that the slavery mentioned in scripture was sanctioned by divine authority. Will this concession affect the question at issue, or establish the lawfulness of the African slave trade? By no means. But before we enter upon the discussion of this subject, it will be proper to premise that the cause for which we plead has suffered materially from the ambiguity of the term slavery. This vague and undefined term is applied to conditions of society differing very widely in almost every essential particular. We speak of our becoming slaves if a minister do but suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. The French are called slaves because they do not enjoy the same degree of political liberty with which Providence has blessed this island. The domestic servitude of Africa (which probably bears a close resemblance to patriarchal bondage) is termed slavery, and the subjects of it slaves. Some other name, therefore, ought to be invented to express West Indian bondage; for by means of the association of ideas, which is produced by this intercommunity of appellation, especially in the minds of persons who have had no opportunity of fully investigating the subject, the African slave trade, together with that system which it feeds and perpetuates in the West Indies, is confounded with states of servitude so very mitigated as to excite no horror, and is thus relieved

from a great part of its shade. Our most religious author, it is true, takes it upon him to conclude, from the anti. quity and universality of slavery, that its "toleration and use" are not only authorized by holy writ, but are princi. ples implanted in our nature. Without pretending to unravel the meaning of this profound sentence we would observe, that it remains to be proved that any parallel to the case in hand has existed either in ancient or modern times. The system of slavery which prevails in our West Indian colonies we believe to stand alone in the history of the world. It is not only, (as Mr. Pitt affirmed in 1792, and as even Lord Cas tlereagh has recently repeated), the greatest practical evil which has ever afflicted the human race; but it is an evil sui generis, so radically and essentially different from every other which happens to have the same name attached to it, as scarcely to form a fair ground even of analogical reasoning. But let us consider this point more attentively.

The miseries entailed on Africa by the slave trade have already been sufficiently established in the preceding article of our review. We need not, therefore, dwell on that part of the subject. Let us follow the slaves in the middle passage.

There, if we may credit the man-merchant, the utmost exertions of his humanity and beneficence are employed to promote the ease and comfort of his African passengers. But even there we shall be constrained to confess that his tender mercies are cruel. The authentic journal of a voyage in a slave ship, inserted in the former part of this number, will throw some light on this view of the case: and it will be illustrated and confirmed by the following statement, correcily extracted from returns which, in 1799, were furnished by the inspectorgeneral of the customs, and laid upon the table of the House of Lords.

In the year 1791, (three years after the passing of the Slave carrying Act, which is admitted by the man-merchants themselves to have very greatly lessened the mortality on board of slave ships) of fifteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-four slaves carried from the coast of Africa, one thousand three hundred

and seventy-eight died during the middle passage, the average length of which was fifty-one days; making a mortality of eight and three-fourths per cent. in that time, or of sixty-two and one-half per cent, per annum: a rate of mortality which would depeople the earth in a year and seven months.

The amount of the mortality in 1792 was, however, still more enormous. Of thirty-one thousand five hundred and fifty-four slaves carried from Africa, no fewer than five thousand four hundred and thirteen died on the passage, making somewhat more than seventeen per cent. in fifty-one days. Had the voyage been prolonged, and the slaves continued to die in the same proportion, the whole number would have been completely swept away in about ten months. We would now ask, whether it be fair, whether it be allowable, to dignify a practice so pregnant with misery and murder, with the name of commerce? It is not a commerce; it is a crime: it is murder, wanton, foul, atrocious, and aggravated: committed, not by the needy adventurer under the urgent pressure of poverty; not by some injured individual thirsting for revenge: but by the wealthy capitalists of Liver. pool and London; by the luxurious proprietors of our West Indian colonies: and solely; let it be remembered, for the purpose of satisfying, if possible, their thirst of gain, or more fully pampering their luxury. Surely this cannot long be endured by a British parliament. If it is to be tolerated, let us at least have some specious pretext for the indulgence : let there be, at least, one practice pointed out either in ancient or modern story, which will bear to be compared for one moment with this abominable traffic: otherwise we ought no longer to be imposed upon by the hardy assumption of its antiquity and universality.

But the horrors of the middle passage are at length terminated. The slaves are landed in the West Indies; exposed like cattle in a fair; spanned and guaged with as little ceremony as is observed by a carcass-butcher in Smithfield; and having been purchased by some planter, are led to his estate. What is then the situation of such of them as survive the seasoning? They Christ. Observ. No. 30.

are the absolute property of their purchaser, vendible by him precisely in the same manner as the horse which turns his sugar-mill; and, if direct privation of life and limb be expected, equally subject to his discretion as to the quantity of labour to be exacted, the proportion of food to be allowed, and the discipline or punishment to be inflicted. During the hours of labour, they are driven like a team of oxen or horses by the cartwhip; and this compulsion of labour by the physical impulse, or present terror of the whip, is universal with respect to such slaves as are engaged in cultivating our islands. As to civil rights, or any political existence, they stand on a level with the brute. Immoderate cruelty to a slave is punishable as a nuisance in the same way as immoderate cruelty to cattle. But then, it is always difficult and generally impossible to obtain proof of the fact; for, (let it not be forgotten,) the evidence of a slave, or of a thousand slaves, did they all testify the same thing, would not be available in the very smallest degree to the conviction of one who is free. This then is the state of bondage to which, not only the imported Africans themselves, but their children, and their children's children,' FOR EVER AND EVER, are inevitably consigned: and we defy any one to shew not only that a single circumstance in this picture is exaggerated, but that it is not a matter of as univer. sal notoriety in the West Indies, whatever it may be in Europe, as the existence of slavery at all. We do not mean, indeed, to affirm, that this system is not as humanely administered by many West Indian planters, as its nature will admit. We know it is. But still such is the system which they have to administer.

Let it be remarked, however, that there is one circumstance in the lot of West Indian slaves which renders it even worse than that of brutes. They not only feel present pain; but they can remember the past: they can anti cipate the future: they can discourse: they can contrive: they can execute: they can distinguish between right and wrong: they have had the insolence at times to exercise this faculty: nay,

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they have even dared to prefer a claim to the possession of humanity, by expressing a sense of injury and injustice, and by shewing that they can resent it. Hence it is, that while in this country we see men take pleasure in raising their horses and their dogs to a participation of their own enjoyments, and to a place as it were in their friendship and society, the slave in the West Indies is degraded and thrust down to the very earth; lest looking upwards, some untoward accident should discover to him that he is a man, possessed of the same common nature with his master, and equally entitled with him to feel, and to repel, insult, and injury, and

torture.

Now we do not hesitate to challenge all the advocates of the slave trade to point out, in ancient times, any state or condition of life which bears the most remote resemblance to the West Indian system viewed in all its parts, from its commencement in Africa to its completion in the West Indies. Nay, so far is it from having any claim to antiquity, that we take it upon ourselves to aver that this system, as now constituted, is entirely a modern invention. It took its rise in the Antilles, about one hundred and fifty years ago; and from that time it has been gradually auginenting, until, by the accumulating waste of British capital and African blood, it has acquired its present hide ous form and gigantic dimensions.

Still, however, it may be pertinaciously argued that slavery is slavery; and that no doubt can be entertained of the existence of such a state of society among the Israelites. We will admit the fact, for the sake of having some ground on which to rest our argument. The bondage which prevailed among the Israelites will not be said, by the most hardy vindicator of the modern man-merchant, to have been worse than that to which the children of Israel themselves had been subjected in Egypt.* Of that state they alAnd the Egyptians made the children to serve with rigour, and they made es bitter with hard bondage.” Exod. "I have surely seen the affliction of eople which are in Egypt, and have heard cry by reason of their task-masters; for Show their sorrows.”—“I have seen the op.

ways spoke as a state of the most intolerable oppression. In comparison of it, every other servitude was light. Their deliverance from it, as typical of another and greater deliverance, was called by way of eminence their redemption. So powerful was their impression of the horrors of this state, that the iron furnace, the furnace of affliction, and similar expressions seem inadequate to express their conceptions of it; and Egypt, the land of their captivity, is emphatically termed the house of bondage: and it is by the recollection of their suffering in that coun try, that the Almighty enforces upon them the injunction to be kind to the strangers who dwelt among them.

Yet what, after all, was the nature of this Egyptian bondage? Was its dreadful severity such as to diminish the number of slaves, and to require fresh importations to fill up the void which was caused by excessive labour, harsh treatment, and scanty food? By no means. They multiplied so rapidly as to become an object of terror to their oppressors from their very increase. Had their labour no known measure or limit, or was it forced from them at the caprice of an overseer or driver by the compelling power of the cartwhip? No such thing. It was the subject of specific and uniform regulation: tasks were appointed: the tale of bricks was previously named. And as to food, the flesh pots of Egypt had become proverbial among them.

Having now, as we conceive, incontrovertibly established the radical difference between any slavery which could have existed among the Israelites, and that which now exists in the West Indies, we have at least demolished every thing like argument in favour of the scriptural sanction of the African slave trade. We would, therefore, entreat those well meaning men in this country, who, from unacquaintance with the real state of things in the West Indies, have too readily conceded that the system of West Indian bondage has any countenance in scripture, to retract

pression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.” Exod. iii. 7. 9. Are the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth less open now to the cry of his creatures, than in the days of Moses?

that concession; and to be no longer imposed upon by the mere similarity of a name, when the things are in their nature so essentially distinct. And let not the man-merchants, nor their advocates any longer insult the common sense, to say nothing of the religion of their country, by arguments so absurd and impious.

It will scarcely be expected, that after this confutation of the argument deduced from scripture in favour of the slave trade, we should think it neces. sary to prove the contrariety of those practices to which this trade gives birth, as well as of the principles on which it is founded, to the whole tenor and scope both of the Old and of the New Testament. Britannicus seems to have been prudently aware of this; for in his attempt to prove the scriptural authority of the slave trade, he has omitted to make even a distant allusion to the New Testament. That the spirit of the christian religion stands opposed to the slave trade, is too obvious to require proof. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with having rectified the misconceptions which have arisen on this subject from the ambiguous use of

the term slavery.

But it will be triumphantly urged

against the abolition; "Are not the negroes slaves in their own country, in subjection to cruel, barbarous, uncivilized tyrants; from whom it is a kindness to rescue them?" Here again the poverty of language tends, in no small degree, to mislead our judgment; and because what is called slavery exists in Africa, our colonial system in all its parts is assumed (extravagantly enough) to be lawful and even humane. But let us compare them. Does the population of Africa decrease? No: it increases so rapidly, that even the mur. derous slave trade is thence annually supplied with its eighty thousand victims, independent of at least an equal number which must almost necessarily be sacrificed, in order that these may be procured. Are slaves in Africa subjected to the same compulsory process for the extraction of their labour as in the West Indies; or are they sub. jected to the same privation of every civil and political right? Let this ques

tion be answered by an appeal to the writings of slave traders, and avowed anti-abolitionists. Mr. Moore, who was factor to the Royal African Company in the river Gambia, about the year 1730, thus expresses himself:

"Some people," says he, "have a good many house Slaves, which is their greatest glory, and they live so well and easy, that it Slaves from their masters or mistresses; they is sometimes a very hard matter to know the very often being better clothed, especially the females, who have sometimes coral, amber, and silver, about their hands and wrists, to the Many of the Slaves are born in their families. value of twenty or thirty pounds sterling.

There is a whole village near Boncoe, of two hundred people, who are all the wives, slaves, or children of one man. I never heard of but one that ever sold a family Slave, except for such crimes, as would have made them to be

sold, had they been free. If there are many family Slaves, and one of them commits a crime, the master cannot sell him without the joint consent of the rest; for, if he does, they will all run away, and be protected by the next kingdom to which they fly." P. 110.

Mr. Park fully confirms the statement of Mr. Moore; and from him it fully appears, that although what is called domestic slavery exists in Africa, yet the evils of the slave trade do not fall with less weight upon domestic slaves than upon freemen. Mr. Park of the domestic slave to be so easy and not only describes the circumstances comfortable, that in every laborious occupation "the master and his slave work together without any distinction of superiority." p. 286; but he likewise admits that he can only be sold to foreigners in cases which would equally authorize the sale of freemen. And he adds what is very important to the present argument, viz. "the master cannot sell his domestic without having first brought him to public trial before the chief men of the place." p. 287.

Innumerable testimonies to the same effect might easily be produced, which would all go to establish incontrovertibly the almost incalculable distance which separates our system of colonial bondage from the domestic servitude of Africa. But in Africa, let it further be remembered, there is no difference of colour between the master and his slave. In the islands, on