The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition - Thomas Clarkson
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After the death of Cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who
had come into power, encouraged the Slave Trade. In 1517, he granted a
patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right
of importing four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long
enough to repent of what he had thus inconsiderately done; for in the
year 1542, he made a code of laws for the better protection of the
unfortunate Indians in his foreign dominions, and he stopped the
progress of African slavery by an order that all slaves in his American
islands should he made free. This order was executed by Pedro de la
Gasca. Manumission took place as well in Hispaniola as on the Continent;
but on the return of Gasca to Spain, and the retirement of Charles into
a monastery, slavery was revived.
It is impossible to pass over this instance of the abolition of slavery
by Charles, in all his foreign dominions, without some comments. It
shows him, first, to have been a friend both to the Indians and the
Africans, as a part of the human race; it shows he was ignorant of what
he was doing when he gave his sanction to this cruel trade; it shows
when legislators give one set of men undue power over another, how
quickly they abuse it, or he never would have found himself obliged, in
the short space of twenty-five years, to undo that which he had
countenanced as a great state measure; and while it confirms the former
lesson to statesmen of watching the beginnings or principles of things
in their political movements, it should teach them never to persist in
the support of evils, through the false shame of being obliged to
confess that they had once given them their sanction, nor to delay the
cure of them because, politically speaking, neither this nor that is the
proper season; but to do them away instantly, as there can only be one
fit or proper time in the eye of religion, namely, on the conviction of
their existence.
From the opinions of Cardinal Ximenes and of the emperor Charles the
Fifth, I hasten to that which was expressed much about the same time, in
a public capacity, by Pope Leo the Tenth. The Dominicans in Spanish
America, witnessing the cruel treatment which the slaves underwent
there, considered slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the
gospel, and recommended the abolition of it. The Franciscans did not
favour the former in this their scheme of benevolence; and the
consequence was, that a controversy on this subject sprung up between
them, which was carried to this pope for his decision. Leo exerted
himself, much to his honour, in behalf of the poor sufferers, and
declared "That not only the Christian religion, but that Nature herself
cried out against a state of slavery." This answer was certainly worthy
of one who was deemed the head of the Christian Church. It must,
however, be confessed that it would have been strange if Leo, in his
situation as pontiff, had made a different reply. He could never have
denied that God was no respecter of persons. He must have acknowledged
that men were bound to love each other as brethren; and, if he admitted
the doctrine that all men were accountable for their actions hereafter,
he could never have prevented the deduction that it was necessary they
should be free. Nor could he, as a man of high attainments, living early
in the sixteenth century, have been ignorant of what had taken place in
the twelfth; or that, by the latter end of this latter century,
christianity had obtained the undisputed honour of having extirpated
slavery from the western part of the European world.
From Spain and Italy I come to England. The first importation of slaves
from Africa, by our countrymen, was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the
year 1562. This great princess seems on the very commencement of the
trade to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a
religious scruple concerning it; and, indeed, to have revolted at the
very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which
its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most
unjustifiable means might be made use of to procure the persons of the
natives of Africa. And in what light she would have viewed any acts of
this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact,--that
when Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins returned from his first
voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent
for him, and, as we learn from Hill's _Naval History_ expressed her
concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their
free consent, declaring that "it would be detestable, and call down the
vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers." Captain Hawkins promised to
comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect, but he did not
keep his word; for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the
inhabitants and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in
the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable
words:--"Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into
slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance
in heaven for the worst of crimes, will some time be the destruction of
all who allow or encourage it." That the trade should have been suffered
to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as
those which she has been described to have uttered, can be only
attributed to the pains taken by those concerned in it to keep her
ignorant of the truth.
From England I now pass over to France. Labat, a Roman missionary, in
his account of the isles of America, mentions that Louis the Thirteenth
was very uneasy when he was about to issue the edict by which all
Africans coming into his colonies were to be made slaves, and that this
uneasiness continued till he was assured that the introduction of them
in this capacity into his foreign dominions was the readiest way of
converting them to the principles of the Christian religion.
These, then, were the first forerunners in the great cause of the
abolition of the Slave Trade: nor have their services towards it been of
small moment; for, in the first place, they have enabled those who came
after them, and who took an active interest in the same cause, to state
the great authority of their opinions and of their example. They have
enabled them, again, to detail the history connected with these, in
consequence of which circumstances have been laid open which it is of
great importance to know; for have they not enabled them to state that
the African Slave Trade never would have been permitted to exist but for
the ignorance of those in authority concerning it--that at its
commencement there was a revolting of nature against it--a suspicion, a
caution, a fear, both as to its unlawfulness and its effects? Have they
not enabled them to state that falsehoods were advanced, and these
concealed under the mask of religion, to deceive those who had the power
to suppress it? Have they not enabled them to state that this trade
began in piracy, and that it was continued upon the principles of force?
And, finally, have not they who have been enabled to make these
statements, knowing all the circumstances connected with them, found
their own zeal increased, and their own courage and perseverance
strengthened; and have they not, by the communication of them to others,
produced many friends and even labourers in the cause?
CHAPTER III.
[Sidenote: Forerunners continued to 1787; divided from this time into
four classes.--First class consists principally of persons in Great
Britain of various descriptions: Godwyn; Baxter; Tryon; Southern;
Primatt; Montesquieu; Hutcheson; Sharp; Ramsay; and a multitude of
others, whose names and services follow.]
I have hitherto traced the history of the forerunners in this great
cause only up to about the year 1640. If I am to pursue my plan, I am to
trace it to the year 1787. But in order to show what I intend in a
clearer point of view, I shall divide those who have lived within this
period, and who will now consist of persons in a less elevated station,
into four classes: and I shall give to each class a distinct
consideration by itself.
Several of our old English writers, though they have not mentioned the
African Slave Trade, or the slavery consequent upon it, in their
respective works, have yet given their testimony of condemnation against
both. Thus our great Milton:--
O execrable son, so to aspire,
Above his brethren, to himself assuming
Authority usurpt, from God not given;
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By his donation; but man over men
He made not lord, such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.
I might mention Bishop Saunderson and others, who bore a testimony
equally strong against the lawfulness of trading in the persons of men,
and of holding them in bondage; but as I mean to confine myself to those
who have favoured the cause of the Africans specifically, I cannot admit
their names into any of the classes which have been announced.
Of those, who compose the first class, defined as it has now been, I
cannot name any individual who took a part in this cause till between
the years 1670 and 1680; for in the year 1640, and for a few years
afterwards, the nature of the trade and of the slavery was but little
known, except to a few individuals, who were concerned in them; and it
is obvious that these would neither endanger their own interest nor
proclaim their own guilt by exposing it. The first, whom I shall mention
is Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the established church. This pious
divine wrote a treatise upon the subject, which he dedicated to the then
archbishop of Canterbury. He gave it to the world, at the time
mentioned, under the title of "_The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate._" In
this treatise he lays open the situation of these oppressed people, of
whose sufferings he had been an eye-witness in the island of Barbados.
He calls forth the pity of the reader in an affecting manner, and
exposes with a nervous eloquence the brutal sentiments and conduct of
their oppressors. This seems to have been the first work undertaken in
England expressly in favour of the cause.
The next person, whom I shall mention, is Richard Baxter, the celebrated
divine among the nonconformists. In his _Christian Directory_, published
about the same time as _The Negroes' and Indians' Advocate_, he gives
advice to those masters in foreign plantations, who have negroes and
other slaves. In this he protests loudly against this trade. He says
expressly that they, who go out as pirates, and take away poor Africans,
or people of another land, who never forfeited life or liberty, and make
them slaves and sell them, are the worst of robbers, and ought to be
considered as the common enemies of mankind; and that they who buy them,
and use them as mere beasts for their own convenience, regardless of
their spiritual welfare, are fitter to be called demons than christians.
He then proposes several queries, which he answers in a clear and
forcible manner, showing the great inconsistency of this traffic, and
the necessity of treating those then in bondage with tenderness and a
due regard to their spiritual concerns.
The _Directory_ of Baxter was succeeded by a publication called
_Friendly Advice to the Planters_ in three parts. The first of these
was, _A brief Treatise of the principal Fruits and Herbs that grow in
Barbados, Jamaica, and other Plantations in the West Indies_. The second
was, _The Negroes' Complaint, or their hard Servitude, and the Cruelties
practised upon them by divers of their Masters professing Christianity_.
And the third was, _A Dialogue between an Ethiopian and a Christian, his
Master, in America_. In the last of these, Thomas Tryon, who was the
author, inveighs both against the commerce and the slavery of the
Africans, and in a striking manner examines each by the touchstone of
reason, humanity, justice, and religion.
In the year 1696, Southern brought forward his celebrated tragedy of
_Oronooko_, by means of which many became enlightened upon the subject,
and interested in it. For this tragedy was not a representation of
fictitious circumstances, but of such as had occurred in the colonies,
and as had been communicated in a publication by Mrs. Behn.
The person who seems to have noticed the subject next was Dr. Primatt.
In his _Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy, and on the Sin of Cruelty to
Brute Animals_, he takes occasion to advert to the subject of the
African Slave Trade. "It has pleased God," says he, "to cover some men
with white skins and others with black; but as there is neither merit
nor demerit in complexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity
of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his colour to
enslave and tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or
black, such he is by God's appointment, and, abstractly considered, is
neither a subject for pride, nor an object of contempt."
After Dr. Primatt, we come to Baron Montesquieu, "Slavery," says he, "is
not good in itself. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave;
not to the slave, because he can do nothing from virtuous motives; not
to the master, because he contracts among his slaves all sorts of bad
habits, and accustoms himself to the neglect of all the moral virtues.
He becomes haughty, passionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and
cruel." And with respect to this particular species of slavery, he
proceeds to say, "It is impossible to allow the negroes are men,
because, if we allow them to be men, it will begin to be believed that
we ourselves are not Christians."
Hutcheson, in his _System of Moral Philosophy_, endeavours to show, that
he who detains another by force in slavery, can make no good title to
him, and adds, "Strange that in any nation where a sense of liberty
prevails, and where the Christian religion is professed, custom and high
prospect of gain can so stupify the consciences of men, and all sense of
natural justice, that they can hear such computations made about the
value of their fellow-men and their liberty, without abhorrence and
indignation!"
Foster, in his _Discourses on Natural Religion and Social Virtue_, calls
the slavery under our consideration "a criminal and outrageous violation
of the natural rights of mankind." I am sorry that I have not room to
say all that he says on this subject. Perhaps the following beautiful
extracts may suffice:--
"But notwithstanding this, we ourselves, who profess to be
Christians, and boast of the peculiar advantages we enjoy by
means of an express revelation of our duty from heaven, are in
effect these very untaught and rude heathen countries. With all
our superior light, we instil into those whom we call savage and
barbarous, the most despicable opinion of human nature. We, to
the utmost of our power, weaken and dissolve the universal tie
that binds and unites mankind. We practise what we should
exclaim against as the utmost excess of cruelty and tyranny, if
nations of the world, differing in colour and form of government
from ourselves, were so possessed of empire as to be able to
reduce us to a state of unmerited and brutish servitude. Of
consequence, we sacrifice our reason, our humanity, our
Christianity, to an unnatural sordid gain. We teach other
nations to despise and trample under foot all the obligations of
social virtue. We take the most effectual method to prevent the
propagation of the Gospel, by representing it as a scheme of
power and barbarous oppression, and an enemy to the natural
privileges and rights of man."
"Perhaps all that I have now offered may be of very little
weight to restrain this enormity, this aggravated iniquity.
However, I shall still have the satisfaction of having entered
my private protest against a practice which, in my opinion, bids
that God, who is the God and Father of the Gentiles unconverted
to Christianity, most daring and bold defiance, and spurns at
all the principles both of natural and revealed religion."
The next author is Sir Richard Steele, who, by means of the affecting
story of Inkle and Yarico, holds up this trade again to our abhorrence.
In the year 1735, Atkins, who was a surgeon in the navy, published his
_Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies, in his Majesty's ships
Swallow and Weymouth_. In this work he describes openly the manner of
making the natives slaves, such as by kidnapping, by unjust accusations
and trials, and by other nefarious means. He states also the cruelties
practised upon them by the white people, and the iniquitous ways and
dealings of the latter, and answers their argument, by which they
insinuated that the condition of the Africans was improved by their
transportation to other countries.
From this time, the trade beginning to be better known, a multitude of
persons of various stations and characters sprung up, who by exposing
it, are to be mentioned among the forerunners and coadjutors in the
cause.
Pope, in his _Essay on Man_, where he endeavours to show that happiness
in the present depends, among other things, upon the hope of a future
state, takes an opportunity of exciting compassion in behalf of the poor
African, while he censures the avarice and cruelty of his master:--
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky-way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope was given
Behind the cloud-topt hill an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
Thomson also, in his _Seasons_, marks this traffic as destructive and
cruel, introducing the well-known fact of sharks following the vessels
employed in it:--
Increasing still the sorrows of those storms,
His jaws horrific arm'd with three-fold fate,
Here dwells the direful shark. Lured by the scent
Of steaming crowds, of rank disease, and death;
Behold! he rushing cuts the briny flood,
Swift as the gale can bear the ship along,
And from the partners of that cruel trade;
Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons,
Demands his share of prey, demands themselves.
The stormy fates descend: one death involves
Tyrants and slaves; when straight their mangled limbs
Crashing at once, he dyes the purple seas
With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal.
Neither was Richard Savage forgetful in his poems of the _Injured
Africans_: he warns their oppressors of a day of retribution for their
barbarous conduct. Having personified Public Spirit, he makes her speak
on the subject in the following manner:--
Let by my specious name no tyrants rise,
And cry, while they enslave, they civilize!
Know, Liberty and I are still the same
Congenial--ever mingling flame with flame!
Why must I Afric's sable children see
Vended for slaves, though born by nature free,
The nameless tortures cruel minds invent
Those to subject whom Nature equal meant?
If these you dare (although unjust success
Empowers you now unpunished, to oppress),
Revolving empire you and yours may doom--
(Rome all subdu'd--yet Vandals vanquish'd Rome)
Yes--Empire may revolt--give them the day,
And yoke may yoke, and blood may blood repay.
Wallis, in his _System of the Laws of Scotland_, maintains, that
"neither men nor governments have a right to sell those of their own
species. Men and their liberty are neither purchaseable nor saleable."
And, after arguing the case, he says, "This is the law of nature, which
is obligatory on all men, at all times, and in all places.--Would not
any of us, who should be snatched by pirates from his native land, think
himself cruelly abused, and at all times entitled to be free? Have not
these unfortunate Africans, who meet with the same cruel fate, the same
right? Are they not men as well as we? And have they not the same
sensibility? Let us not, therefore, defend or support an usage, which is
contrary to all the laws of humanity."
In the year 1750, the reverend Griffith Hughes, rector of St. Lucy, in
Barbados, published his Natural History of that island. He took an
opportunity, in the course of it, of laying open to the world the
miserable situation of the poor Africans, and the waste of them by hard
labour and other cruel means, and he had the generosity to vindicate
their capacities from the charge, which they who held them in bondage
brought against them, as a justification of their own wickedness in
continuing to deprive them of the rights of men.
Edmund Burke, in his account of the European settlements, (for this work
is usually attributed to him,) complains "that the Negroes in our
colonies endure a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse
circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer, in any
other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time.
Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste, which we
experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy
evidence of this truth." And he goes on to advise the planters, for the
sake of their own interest, to behave like good men, good masters, and
good Christians, and to impose less labour upon their slaves, and to
give them recreation on some of the grand festivals, and to instruct
them in religion, as certain preventives of their decrease.
An anonymous author of a pamphlet, entitled, _An Essay in Vindication of
the Continental Colonies of America_, seems to have come forward next.
Speaking of slavery there, he says, "It is shocking to humanity,
violative of every generous sentiment, abhorrent utterly from the
Christian religion.--There cannot be a more dangerous maxim than that
necessity is a plea for injustice, for who shall fix the degree of this
necessity? What villain so atrocious, who may not urge this excuse, or,
as Milton has happily expressed it,
And with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excuse his devilish deed?
"That our colonies," he continues, "want people, is a very weak argument
for so inhuman a violation of justice.--Shall a civilized, a Christian
nation encourage slavery, because the barbarous, savage, lawless African
hath done it? To what end do we profess a religion whose dictates we so
flagrantly violate? Wherefore have we that pattern of goodness and
humanity, if we refuse to follow it? How long shall we continue a
practice which policy rejects, justice condemns, and piety revolts at?"
The poet Shenstone, who comes next in order, seems to have written an
elegy on purpose to stigmatize this trade. Of this elegy I shall copy
only the following parts:--
See the poor native quit the Libyan shores,
Ah! not in love's delightful fetters bound!
No radiant smile his dying peace restores,
No love, nor fame, nor friendship, heals his wound.
Let vacant bards display their boasted woes;
Shall I the mockery of grief display?
No; let the muse his piercing pangs disclose,
Who bleeds and weeps his sum of life away!
On the wild heath in mournful guise he stood,
Ere the shrill boatswain gave the hated sign;
He dropt a tear unseen into the flood,
He stole one secret moment to repine--
"Why am I ravish'd from my native strand?
What savage race protects this impious gain?
Shall foreign plagues infest this teeming land,
And more than sea-born monsters plough the main?
Here the dire locusts' horrid swarms prevail;
Here the blue asps with livid poison swell;
Here the dry dipsa writhes his sinuous mail;
Can we not here secure from envy dwell?
When the grim lion urged his cruel chase,
When the stern panther sought his midnight prey;
What fate reserved me for this Christian race?
O race more polished, more severe than they!
Yet shores there are, bless'd shores for us remain,
And favour'd isles, with golden fruitage crown'd,
Where tufted flow'rets paint the verdant plain,
And every breeze shall medicine every wound."
In the year 1755, Dr. Hayter, bishop of Norwich, preached a sermon
before the _Society for the Propagation of the Gospel_, in which he bore
his testimony against the continuance of this trade.
Dyer, in his poem called _The Fleece_, expresses his sorrow on account
of this barbarous trade, and looks forward to a day of retributive
justice on account of the introduction of such an evil.
In the year 1760, a pamphlet appeared, entitled, _Two Dialogues on the
Man-trade_, by John Philmore. This name is supposed to be an assumed
one. The author, however, discovers himself to have been both an able
and a zealous advocate in favour of the African race.
Malachi Postlethwaite, in his _Universal Dictionary of Trade and
Commerce_, proposes a number of queries on the subject of the Slave
Trade. I have not room to insert them at full length, but I shall give
the following as the substance of some of them to the reader: "Whether
this commerce be not the cause of incessant wars among the
Africans--Whether the Africans, if it were abolished, might not become
as ingenious, as humane, as industrious, and as capable of arts,
manufactures, and trades, as even the bulk of Europeans--Whether, if it
were abolished, a much more profitable trade might not be substituted,
and this to the very centre of their extended country, instead of the
trifling portion which now subsists upon their coasts--And whether the
great hindrance to such a new and advantageous commerce has not wholly
proceeded from that unjust, inhuman, unchristianlike traffic, called the
Slave Trade, which is carried on by the Europeans." The public proposal
of these and other queries by a man of so great commercial knowledge as
Postlethwaite, and by one who was himself a member of the African
Committee, was of great service in exposing the impolicy as well as
immorality of the Slave Trade.