The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition - Thomas Clarkson
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But why had the trade ever been permitted at all? The preamble of the
act would show: "Whereas the trade to and from Africa is very
advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for supplying the
Plantations and Colonies thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of
Negroes at reasonable rates, and for that purpose the said trade should
be carried on."--Here then we might see what the Parliament had in view,
when it passed this act. But no one of the occasions, on which it
grounded its proceedings, now existed. He would plead, then, the act
itself as an argument for the abolition. If it had been proved that,
instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain, it was the most
destructive to her interests--that it was the ruin of her seamen--that
it stopped the extension of her manufactures;--if it had been proved, in
the second place, that it was not now necessary for the supply of our
Plantations with Negroes;--if it had been further established, that it
was from the beginning contrary to the first principles of justice, and
consequently that a pledge for its continuance, had one been attempted
to be given, must have been absolutely void--where in this act of
parliament was the contract to be found, by which Britain was bound, as
she was said to be, never to listen to her own true interests and to the
cries of the natives of Africa? Was it not clear, that all argument,
founded on the supposed pledge of Parliament, made against those who
employed it?
But if we were not bound by existing laws to the support of this trade,
we were doubly criminal in pursuing it; for why ought it to be abolished
at all? Because it was incurable injustice. Africa was the ground on
which he chiefly rested; and there it was, that his two honourable
friends, one of whom had proposed gradual abolition, and the other
regulation, did not carry their principles, to their full extent. Both
had confessed the trade to be a moral evil. How much stronger, then, was
the argument, for immediate than for gradual abolition! If on the ground
of a moral evil it was to be abolished at last, why ought it not now?
Why was injustice to be suffered to remain for a single hour? He knew of
no evil, which ever had existed, nor could he imagine any to exist,
worse than the tearing of eighty thousand persons annually from their
native land, by a combination of the most civilized nations, in the most
enlightened quarter of the globe; but more, especially by that nation,
which called herself the most free and the most happy of them all.
He would now notice the objection, that other nations would not give up
the Slave Trade, if we were to renounce it. But if the trade were
stained, but by a thousandth part of the criminality which he and
others, after a thorough investigation of the subject, charged upon it,
the House ought immediately to vote for its abolition. This miserable
argument, if persevered in, would be an eternal bar to the annihilation
of the evil. How was it ever to be eradicated, if every nation was thus
prudentially to wait till the concurrence of all the world should be
obtained! But it applied a thousand times more strongly in a contrary
way. How much more justly would other nations say, "Great Britain, free
as she is, just and honourable as she is, not only has not abolished,
but has refused to abolish, the Slave Trade. She has investigated it
well. Her senate has deliberated upon it. It is plain, then, that she
sees no guilt in it." With this argument we should furnish the other
nations of Europe, if we were again to refuse to put an end to this
cruel traffic; and we should have from henceforth not only to answer for
our own, but for their crimes also. Already we have suffered one year to
pass away; and now, when the question was renewed, not only had this
wretched argument been revived, but a proposition had been made for the
gradual abolition of the trade. He knew, indeed, the difficulty of
reforming long established abuses; but in the present case, by proposing
some other period than the present, by prescribing some condition, by
waiting for some contingencies, perhaps till we obtained the general
concurrence of Europe, (A concurrence which he believe never yet took
place at the commencement of any one improvement in policy or morals,)
he fared that this most enormous evil would never be redressed. Was it
not folly to wait for the stream to run down before we crossed the bed
of its channel? Alas! we might wait for ever. The river would still flow
on. We should be no nearer the object which we had in view, so long as
the step, which could alone bring us to it was not taken.
He would now proceed to the civilization of Africa; and, as his eye had
just glanced upon a West Indian law in the evidence upon the table, he
would begin with an argument, which the sight of it had suggested to
him. This argument had been ably answered in the course of the evening;
but he would view it in yet another light. It had been said, that the
savage disposition of the Africans rendered the prospect of their
civilization almost hopeless. This argument was indeed of long standing;
but, last year, it had been supported upon a new ground. Captain Frazer
had stated in his evidence, that a boy had been put to death at Cabenda,
because there were those who refused to purchase him as a slave. This
single story was deemed by him, and had been considered by others, as a
sufficient proof of the barbarity of the Africans, and of the inutility
of abolishing the Slave Trade. But they, who had used this fact, had
suppressed several circumstances relating to it. It appeared, on
questioning Captain Frazer afterward, that this boy had previously run
away from his master three several times; that the master had to pay his
value, according to the custom of the country, every time he was brought
back; and that partly from anger at the boy for running away so
frequently, and partly to prevent a repetition of the same expense, he
determined to destroy him. Such was the explanation of the signal
instance, which was to fix barbarity on all Africa, as it came out in
the cross-examination of Captain Frazer. That this African master was
unenlightened and barbarous, he freely admitted; but what would an
enlightened and civilized West Indian have done in a similar case? He
would quote the law, passed in the West Indies in 1722, which he had
just cast his eye upon in the book of evidence, by which law this very
same crime of running away was by the legislature, of an island, by the
grave and deliberate sentence of an enlightened legislature, punished
with death; and this, not in the case only of the third offence, but
even in the very first instance. It was enacted, "That, if any Negro or
other slave should withdraw himself from his master for the term of six
months, or any slave, who was absent, should not return within that
time, every such person should suffer death." There was also another
West Indian law, by which every Negro was armed against his fellow
Negro, for he was authorized to kill every runaway slave; and he had
even a reward held out to him for so doing. Let the House now contrast
the two cases. Let them ask themselves which of the two exhibited the
greater barbarity; and whether they could possibly vote for the
continuance of the Slave Trade, upon the principle that the Africans had
shown themselves to be a race of incorrigible barbarians?
Something like an opposite argument, but with a like view, had been
maintained by others on this subject. It had been said, in justification
of the trade, that the Africans had derived some little civilization
from their intercourse with us. Yes; we had given them just enough of
the forms of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials
to their other modes of perpetrating the most atrocious crimes. We had
given them just enough of European improvements, to enable them the more
effectually to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. Alas! alas! we had
carried on a trade with them from this civilized and enlightened
country, which, instead of diffusing knowledge, had been a check to
every laudable pursuit. We had carried a poison into their country,
which spread its contagious effects from one end of it to the other, and
which penetrated to its very centre, corrupting every part to which it
reached. We had there subverted the whole order of nature; we had
aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives
for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and
perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversion of British
commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the
globe. False to the very principles of trade, misguided in our policy,
unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done to
that continent! How should we hope to obtain forgiveness from heaven, if
we refused to use those means which the mercy of Providence had still
reserved to us for wiping away the guilt and shame, with which we were
now covered? If we refused even this degree of compensation, how
aggravated would be our guilt! Should we delay, then, to repair these
incalculable injuries? We ought to count the days, nay the very hours,
which intervened to delay the accomplishment of such a work.
On this great subject, the civilization of Africa, which, he confessed,
was near his heart, he would yet add a few observations. And first he
would say, that the present deplorable state of that country, especially
when we reflected that her chief calamities were to be ascribed to us,
called for our generous aid, rather than justified any despair, on our
part, of her recovery, and still less a repetition of our injuries. On
what ground of theory or history did we act, when we supposed she was
never to be reclaimed? There was a time, which it might be now fit to
call to remembrance, when human sacrifices, and even this very practice
of the Slave Trade existed in our own island. Slaves, as we may read in
HENRY's _History of Great Britain_, were formerly an established article
of our exports. "Great numbers," he says, "were exported like cattle
from the British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the
Roman markets."--"Adultery, witchcraft, and debt," says the same
historian, "were probably some of the chief sources of supplying the
Roman market with British slaves--prisoners taken in war were added to
the number--there might be also among them some unfortunate gamesters,
who, after having lost all their goods, at length staked themselves,
their wives, and their children." Now every one of these sources of
slavery had been stated to be at this hour a source of slavery in
Africa. If these practices, therefore, were to be admitted as proofs of
the natural incapacity of its inhabitants, why might they not have been
applied to ancient Britain? Why might not then some Roman senator,
pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, that
these were a people who were destined never to be free; who were without
the understanding necessary for the attainment of useful arts; depressed
by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, and created
to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the world? But, happily,
since that time, notwithstanding what would then have been the justness
of these predictions, we had emerged from barbarism. We were now raised
to a situation which exhibited a striking contrast to every circumstance
by which a Roman might have characterized us, and by which we now
characterized Africa. There was indeed one thing wanting to complete the
contrast, and to clear us altogether from the imputation of acting even
to this hour as barbarians; for we continued to this hour a barbarous
traffic in slaves; we continued it even yet, in spite of all our great
pretensions. We were once as obscure among the nations of the earth, as
savage in our manners, as debased in our morals, as degraded in our
understandings, as these unhappy Africans. But in the lapse of a long
series of years, by a progression slow, and for a time almost
imperceptible, we had become rich in a variety of acquirements. We were
favoured above measure in the gifts of Providence, we were unrivalled in
commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy
and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we
were in the possession of peace, of liberty, and of happiness; we were
under the guidance of a mild and a beneficent religion; and we were
protected by impartial laws and the purest administration of justice; we
were living under a system of government, which our own happy experience
led us to pronounce the best and wisest, and which had become the
admiration of the World. From all these blessings we must for ever have
been excluded, had there been any truth in those principles, which some
had not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa; and
we should have been at this moment little superior, either in morals,
knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of that continent.
If then we felt that this perpetual confinement in the fetters of brutal
ignorance would have been the greatest calamity which could have
befallen us; if we viewed with gratitude the contrast between our
present and our former situation; if we shuddered to think of the misery
which would still have overwhelmed us, had our country continued to the
present times, through some cruel policy, to be the mart for slaves to
the more civilized nations of the World;--God forbid that we should any
longer subject Africa to the same dreadful scourge, and exclude the
sight of knowledge from her coasts, which had reached every other
quarter of the globe!
He trusted we should no longer continue this commerce, and that we
should no longer consider ourselves as conferring too great a boon on
the natives of Africa in restoring them to the rank of human beings, He
trusted we should not think ourselves too liberal, if, by abolishing the
Slave Trade, we gave them the same common chance of civilization with
other parts of the World. If we listened to the voice of reason and duty
this night, some of us might live to see a reverse of that picture, from
which we how turned our eyes with shame. We might live to behold the
natives engaged in the calm occupations of industry, and in the pursuit
of a just commerce. We might behold the beams of science and philosophy
breaking in upon their land, which at some happy period in still later
times might blaze with full lustre; and joining their influence to that
of pure religion, might illuminate and invigorate the most distant
extremities of that immense continent. Then might we hope, that even
Africa (though last of all the quarters of the globe) should enjoy at
length, in the evening of her days, those blessings, which had descended
so plentifully upon us in a much earlier period of the world. Then also
would Europe, participating in her improvement and prosperity, receive
an ample recompense for the tardy kindness (if kindness it could be
called) of no longer hindering her from extricating herself out of the
darkness, which, in other more fortunate regions, had been so much more
speedily dispelled.
--------Nos primus equis Oriens afflavit anhelis;
Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.
Then might be applied to Africa those words, originally used indeed with
a different view:
His demum exactis------
Devenere locos laetos, et amoena vireta
Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas;
Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo.
It was in this view--it was as an atonement for our long and cruel
injustice towards Africa, that the measure proposed by his honourable
friend Mr. Wilberforce most forcibly recommended itself to his mind. The
great and happy change to be expected in the state of her inhabitants
was, of all the various benefits of the abolition, in his estimation the
most extensive and important. He should vote against the adjournment;
and he should also oppose every proposition which tended either to
prevent, or even to postpone for an hour, the total abolition of the
Slave Trade.
Mr. Pitt having concluded his speech (at about six in the morning), Sir
William Dolben, the chairman, proposed the following questions:--The
first was on the motion of Mr. Jenkinson, "that the chairman do now
leave the chair." This was lost by a majority of two hundred and
thirty-four to eighty-seven. The second was on the motion of Mr. Dundas,
"that the abolition should be, gradual;" when the votes for gradual
exceeded those for immediate by one hundred and ninety-three to one
hundred and twenty-five. He then put the amended question, that "it was
the opinion of the committee that the trade ought to be gradually
abolished." The committee having divided again, the votes for a gradual
abolition were, two hundred and thirty, and those against any abolition
were eighty-five.
After this debate, the committee for the abolition of the Slave Trade
held a meeting. They voted their thanks to Mr. Wilberforce for his
motion, and to Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, and those other members of the House
who had supported it. They resolved, also, that the House of Commons,
having determined that the Slave Trade ought to be gradually abolished,
had by that decision manifested their opinion, that it was cruel and
unjust. They resolved, also, that a gradual abolition of it was not an
adequate remedy for its injustice and cruelty; neither could it be
deemed a compliance with the general wishes of the people, as expressed
in their numerous and urgent petitions to Parliament; and they resolved
lastly, that the interval in which the Slave Trade should be permitted
to continue, afforded a prospect of redoubled cruelties and ravages on
the coast of Africa; and that it imposed therefore an additional
obligation on every friend to the cause to use all constitutional means
to obtain its immediate abolition.
At a subsequent meeting they voted their thanks to the right honourable
Lord Muncaster, for the able support he had given to the great object of
their institution by his _Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade, and of
its Effects in Africa_; addressed to the people of Great Britain; and
they elected the Rev. Richard Gifford, and the Rev. Thomas Gisborne,
honorary and corresponding members; the first on account of his
excellent sermon before-mentioned, and other services; and the latter on
account of his truly Christian and seasonable pamphlet, entitled
_Remarks on the Late Decision of the House of Commons, respecting the
Abolition of the Slave Trade_.
On the 23rd of April, the House of Commons resolved itself into a
committee of the whole House, to consider the subject again; and Mr.
Beaufoy was put into the chair.
Mr. Dundas, upon whom the task of introducing a bill for the gradual
abolition of the Slave Trade now devolved, rose to offer the outlines of
a plan for that purpose. He intended, he said, immediately to abolish
that part of the trade, by which we supplied foreigners with slaves. The
other part of it was to be continued seven years from the 1st of January
next. He grounded the necessity of its continuance till this time upon
the documents of the Negro population in the different islands. In many
of these, slaves were imported, but they were re-exported nearly in
equal numbers. Now, all these he considered to be in a state to go on
without future supplies from Africa. Jamaica and the ceded islands
retained almost all the slaves imported into them. This he considered as
a proof that these had not attained the same desirable state; and it was
therefore necessary, that the trade should be continued longer on this
account. It was his intention, however, to provide proper punishments,
while it lasted, for abuses both in Africa and in the Middle Passage, He
would take care, as far as he could, that none but young slaves should
be brought from the Coast of Africa. He would encourage establishments
there for a new species of traffic. Foreign nations should be invited to
concur in the abolition. He should propose a praedial rather than a
personal service for the West Indies, and institutions, by which the
slaves there should be instructed in religious duties. He concluded by
reading several resolutions, which he would leave to the future
consideration of the House.
Mr. Pitt then rose. He deprecated the resolutions altogether. He denied
also the inferences which Mr. Dundas had drawn from the West Indian
documents relative to the Negro population. He had looked aver his own
calculations from the same documents again and again, and he would
submit them, with all their data, if it should be necessary, to the
House.
Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Fox held the same language. They contended also,
that Mr. Dundas had now proved, a thousand times more strongly than
ever, the necessity of immediate abolition. All the resolutions he had
read were operative against his own reasoning. The latter observed, that
the Slave-traders were in future only to be allowed to steal innocent
children from their disconsolate parents.
After a few observations by Lord Sheffield, Mr. Drake, Colonel Tarleton,
and Mr. Rolle, the House adjourned.
On the 25th of April it resumed the consideration of the subject. Mr.
Dundas then went over his former resolutions, and concluded by moving,
"that it should not be lawful to import any African Negroes into any
British colonies, in ships owned or navigated by British subjects, at
any time after the 1st of January, 1800."
Lord Mornington (now Marquis Wellesley) rose to propose an amendment. He
congratulated his countrymen, that the Slave Trade had received its
death-wound. This traffic was founded in injustice; and between right
and wrong there could be no compromise. Africa was not to be sacrificed
to the apparent good of the West Indies. He would not repeat those
enormities out of the evidence, which had made such a deep impression
upon the House. It had been resolved, that the trade should be
abolished. The question then was, how long they were to persevere in the
crime of its continuance? One had said, that they might be unjust for
ten years longer; another, only till the beginning of the next century.
But this diversity of opinion had proceeded from an erroneous statement
of Mr. Dundas against the clear and irrefragable calculations of Mr.
Pitt. The former had argued, that, because Jamaica and the ceded islands
had retained almost all the slaves which had been, imported into them,
they were therefore not yet in a situation to support their population
without further supplies from Africa. But the truth was, that the
slaves, so retained, were kept, not to maintain the population there,
but to clear new land. Now the House had determined, that the trade was
not to be continued for this purpose. The population, therefore, in the
islands was sufficient to continue the ordinary cultivation of them.
He deprecated the idea, that the Slave Trade had been so sanctioned by
the acts of former Parliaments, that the present could make no
alteration in it. Had not the House altered the import of foreign sugar
into our islands? a measure, which at the time affected the property of
many. Had they not prohibited the exports of provisions from America to
the same quarter; Again, as to compacts, had the Africans ever been
parties to these? It was rather curious also, when King James the Second
gave a charter to the slave-trader, that he should have given them a
right to all the south of Africa, and authority over every person born
therein! But, by doing this, it was clear that he gave them a right
which he never possessed himself. After many other observations, he
concluded by moving, "that the year 1793 be substituted in the place of
the year 1800."
In the course of the debate, which followed, Mr. Burdon stated his
conviction of the necessity of immediate abolition; but he would support
the amendment, as the shortest of the terms proposed.
Mr. Robert Thornton would support it also, as the only choice left him.
He dared not accede to a motion, by which we were to continue for seven
years to imbrue our hands in innocent blood.
Mr. Ryder (now Earl of Harrowby) would not support the trade for one
moment, if he could avoid it. He could not hold a balance with gold in
one scale, and blood in the other.
Mr. William Smith exposed the wickedness of restricting the trade to
certain ages. The original motion, he said, would only operate as a
transfer of cruelty from the aged and the guilty to the young and the
innocent. He entreated the House to consider, whether, if it related to
their own children, any one of them would vote for it.
Mr. Windham had hitherto felt a reluctance to speaking, not from the
abstruseness, but from the simplicity, of the subject; but he could not
longer be silent, when he observed those arguments of policy creeping
again out of their lurking-places, which had fled before eloquence and
truth. The House had clearly given up the policy of the question. They
had been determined by the justice of it. Why were they then to be
troubled again with arguments of this nature? These, if admitted, would
go to the subversion of all public as well as private morality. Nations
were as much bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach
in the former could not be so easily punished. In private life morality
took pretty good care of itself. It was a kind of retail article, in
which the returns were speedy. If a man broke open his neighbour's
house, he would feel the consequences. There was an ally of virtue, who
rendered it the interest of individuals to be moral, and he was called
the executioner. But as such punishment did not always await us in our
national concerns, we should substitute honour as the guardian of our
national conduct. He hoped the West Indians would consider the character
of the mother-country, and the obligations to national as well as
individual justice. He hoped, also, they would consider the sufferings,
which they occasioned both in Africa, in the passage, and in the West
Indies. In the passage, indeed, no one was capable of describing them.
The section of the slave-ship; however, made up the deficiency of
language, and did away all necessity of argument, on this subject.
Disease there had to struggle with the new affliction of chains and
punishment. At one view were the irksomeness of a goal, and the miseries
of an hospital; so that the holds of these vessels put him in mind of
the regions of the damned. The trade, he said, ought immediately to be
abolished. On a comparison of the probable consequences of the abolition
of it, he saw on one side only doubtful contingencies, but on the other
shame and disgrace.