The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition - Thomas Clarkson
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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.
LIST II.
LIST III.
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.
Yet these things, however clearly proved by positive testimony, by the
concession of opponents, by particular inference, by general reasoning,
by the most authentic histories of Africa, by the experience of all
countries and of all ages,--these things, and (what was still more
extraordinary) even the possibility of them, were denied by those who
had been brought forward on the other side of the question. These,
however, were chiefly persons who had been trading-governors of forts in
Africa, or who had long commanded ships in the Slave Trade. As soon as
he knew the sort of witnesses which was to be called against him, he had
been prepared to expect much prejudice. But his expectations had been
greatly surpassed by the testimony they had given. He did not mean to
impeach their private characters, but they certainly showed themselves
under the influence of such gross prejudices, as to render them
incompetent judges of the subject they came to elucidate. They seemed
(if he might so say) to be enveloped by a certain atmosphere of their
own; and to see, as it were, through a kind of African medium. Every
object which met their eyes came distorted and turned from its true
direction. Even the declarations, which they made on other occasions,
seemed wholly strange to them. They sometimes not only forgot what they
had seen, but what they had said; and when to one of them his own
testimony to the privy council was read, he mistook it for that of
another, whose evidence he declared to be "the merest burlesque in the
world."
But the House must be aware that there was not only an African medium,
but an African logic. It seemed to be an acknowledged axiom in this,
that every person who offered a slave for sale had a right to sell him,
however fraudulently he might have obtained him. This had been proved by
the witnesses who opposed him. "It would have stopped my trade," said
one of them, "to have asked the broker how he came by the person he was
offering me for sale."--"We always suppose," said another, "the broker
has a right to sell the person he offers us."--"I never heard of such a
question being asked," said a third; "a man would be thought a fool who
should put such a question."--He hoped the House would see the practical
utility of this logic. It was the key-stone which held the building
together. By means of it, slave-captains might traverse the whole coast
of Africa, and see nothing but equitable practices. They could not,
however, be wholly absolved, even if they availed themselves of this
principle to its fullest extent; for they had often committed
depredations themselves; especially when they were passing by any part
of the coast, where they did not mean to continue or to go again. Hence
it was (as several captains of the navy and others had declared on their
examination), that the natives, when at sea in their canoes, would never
come near the men-of-war, till they knew them to be such. But finding
this, and that they were not slave-vessels, they laid aside their fears,
and came and continued on board with unsuspecting cheerfulness. With
respect to the miseries of the Middle Passage, he had said so much on a
former occasion, that he would spare the feelings of the committee as
much as he could. He would therefore simply state that the evidence,
which was before them, confirmed all those scenes of wretchedness which
he had then described: the same suffering from a state of suffocation,
by being crowded together; the same dancing in fetters; the same
melancholy singing; the same eating by compulsion; the same despair; the
same insanity; and all the other abominations which characterized the
trade. New instances however had occurred, where these wretched men had
resolved on death to terminate their woes. Some had destroyed themselves
by refusing sustenance, in spite of threats and punishments. Others had
thrown themselves into the sea; and more than one, when in the act of
drowning, were seen to wave their hands in triumph, "exulting" (to use
the words of an eye-witness) "that they had escaped." Yet these and
similar things, when viewed through the African medium he had mentioned,
took a different shape and colour. Captain Knox, an adverse witness, had
maintained, that slaves lay during the night in tolerable comfort. And
yet he confessed, that in a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons, in
which he had carried two hundred and ninety slaves, the latter had not
all of them room to lie on their backs. How comfortably, then, must they
have lain in his subsequent voyages! for he carried afterwards, in a
vessel of a hundred and eight tons, four hundred and fifty; and in a
vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, no less than six hundred slaves.
Another instance of African deception was to be found in the testimony
of Captain Frazer, one of the most humane captains in the trade. It had
been said of him, that he had held hot coals to the mouth of a slave, to
compel him to eat. He was questioned on this point; but not admitting,
in the true spirit of African logic, that he who makes another commit a
crime is guilty of it himself, he denied the charge indignantly, and
defied a proof. But it was said to him, "Did you never order such a
thing to be done?" His reply was, "Being sick in my cabin, I was
informed that a man-slave would neither eat, drink, nor speak. I desired
the mate and surgeon to try to persuade him to speak. I desired that the
slaves might try also. When I found he was still obstinate, not knowing
whether it was from sulkiness or insanity, I ordered a person to present
him with a piece of fire in one hand, and a piece of yam in the other,
and to tell me what effect this had upon him. I learnt that he took the
yam and began to eat it, but he threw the fire overboard." Such was his
own account of the matter. This was eating by duresse, if anything could
be called so. The captain, however, triumphed in his expedient; and
concluded by telling the committee, that he sold this very slave at
Grenada for forty pounds. Mark here the moral of the tale, and learn the
nature and the cure of sulkiness.