The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition - Thomas Clarkson
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To you this unpolluted blood I pour,
To you that spirit, which ye gave, restore.
This poem, which was the first ever written expressly on the subject,
was read extensively; and it added to the sympathy in favour of
suffering humanity, which was now beginning to show itself in the
kingdom.
About this time the first edition of the _Essay an Truth_ made its
appearance in the world. Dr. Beattie took an opportunity, in this work,
of vindicating the intellectual powers of the Africans from the
aspersions of Hume, and of condemning their slavery as a barbarous piece
of policy, and as inconsistent with the free and generous spirit of the
British nation.
In the year 1774, John Wesley, the celebrated divine, to whose pious
labours the religious world will long be indebted, undertook the cause
of the poor Africans. He had been in America, and had seen and pitied
their hard condition. The work which he gave to the world in
consequence, was entitled _Thoughts on Slavery_. Mr. Wesley had this
great cause much at heart, and frequently recommended it to the support
of those who attended his useful ministry.
In the year 1776, the Abbe Proyart brought out, at Paris, his _History
of Loango_, and other kingdoms in Africa, in which he did ample justice
to the moral and intellectual character of the natives there.
The same year produced two new friends in England, in the same cause,
but in a line in which no one had yet moved. David Hartley, then a
member of parliament for Hull, and the son of Dr. Hartley who wrote the
_Essay on Man_, found it impossible any longer to pass over without
notice the case of the oppressed Africans. He had long felt for their
wretched condition, and, availing himself of his legislative situation,
he made a motion in the House of Commons, "That the Slave Trade was
contrary to the laws of God, and the rights of men." In order that he
might interest the members as much as possible in his motion, he had
previously obtained some of the chains in use in this cruel traffic, and
had laid them upon the table of the House of Commons. His motion was
seconded by that great patriot and philanthropist, Sir George Saville.
But though I am now to state that it failed, I cannot but consider it as
a matter of pleasing reflection, that this great subject was first
introduced into parliament by those who were worthy of it; by those who
had clean hands and an irreproachable character, and to whom no motive
of party or faction could be imputed, but only such as must have arisen
from a love of justice, a true feeling of humanity, and a proper sense
of religion.
About this time two others, men of great talents and learning, promoted
the cause of the injured Africans, by the manner in which they
introduced them to notice in their respective works.
Dr. Adam Smith, in his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, had, so early as
the year 1759, held them up in an honourable, and their tyrants in a
degrading light. "There is not a Negro from the coast of Africa, who
does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the
soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving.
Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when
she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the gaols of
Europe, to wretches who possess the virtue neither of the countries they
came from, nor of those they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and
baseness so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished." And
now, in 1776, in his _Wealth of Nations_ he showed in a forcible manner
(for he appealed to the interest of those concerned,) the dearness of
African labour; or the impolicy of employing slaves.
Professor Millar, in his _Origin of Ranks_, followed Dr. Smith on the
same ground. He explained the impolicy of slavery in general, by its bad
effects upon industry, population, and morals. These effects he attached
to the system of agriculture as followed in our islands. He showed,
besides, how little pains were taken, or how few contrivances were
thought of, to ease the labourers there. He contended that the Africans
ought to be better treated, and to be raised to a better condition; and
he ridiculed the inconsistency of those who held them in bondage. "It
affords," says he, "a curious spectacle to observe that the same people,
who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the
privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights
of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of
their fellow-creatures into circumstances by which they are not only
deprived of property, but almost of every species of right. Fortune,
perhaps, never produced a situation more calculated to ridicule a
liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the
bottom directed by any philosophical principles." It is a great honour
to the University of Glasgow, that it should have produced, before any
public agitation of this question, three professors[A], all of whom bore
their public testimony against the continuance of the cruel trade.
[Footnote A: The other was Professor Hutcheson, before mentioned in p.
56.]
From this time, or from about the year 1776, to about the year 1782, I
am to put down three other coadjutors, whose labours seem to have come
in a right season for the promotion of the cause.
The first of these was Dr. ROBERTSON. In his _History of America_ he
laid open many facts relative to this subject. He showed himself a warm
friend both of the Indians and Africans. He lost no opportunity of
condemning that trade, which brought the latter into bondage: "a trade,"
says he, "which is no less repugnant to the feelings of humanity than to
the principles of religion." And in his _Charles the Fifth_, he showed
in a manner that was clear, and never to be controverted, that
Christianity was the great cause in the twelfth century of extirpating
slavery from the west of Europe. By the establishment of this fact, he
rendered important services to the oppressed Africans. For if
Christianity, when it began to be felt in the heart, dictated the
abolition of slavery, it certainly became those who lived in a Christian
country, and who professed the Christian religion, to put an end to this
cruel trade.
The second was the Abbe Raynal. This author gave an account of the laws,
government, and religion of Africa, of the produce of it, of the manners
of its inhabitants, of the trade in slaves, of the manner of procuring
these, with several other particulars relating to the subject. And at
the end of his account, fearing lest the good advice he had given for
making the condition of the slaves more comfortable should be construed
into an approbation of such a traffic, he employed several pages in
showing its utter inconsistency with sound policy, justice, reason,
humanity, and religion.
"I will not here," says he, "so far debase myself as to enlarge the
ignominious list of those writers who devote their abilities to justify
by policy what morality condemns. In an age where so many errors are
boldly laid open, it would be unpardonable to conceal any truth that is
interesting to humanity. If whatever I have hitherto advanced hath
seemingly tended only to alleviate the burden of slavery, the reason is,
that it was first necessary to give some comfort to those unhappy beings
whom we cannot set free, and convince their oppressors that they were
cruel, to the prejudice of their real interests. But, in the mean time,
till some considerable revolution shall make the evidence of this great
truth felt, it may not be improper to pursue this subject further. I
shall then first prove that there is no reason of state which can
authorize slavery. I shall not be afraid to cite to the tribunal of
reason and justice those governments which tolerate this cruelty, or
which even are not ashamed to make it the basis of their power."
And a little further on he observes--"Will it be said that he, who wants
to make me a slave, does me no injury; but that he only makes use of his
rights? Where are those rights? Who hath stamped upon them so sacred a
character as to silence mine?"
In the beginning of the next paragraph he speaks thus:--"He who supports
the system of slavery is the enemy of the whole human race. He divides
it into two societies of legal assassins; the oppressors, and the
oppressed. It is the same thing as proclaiming to the world, if you
would preserve your life, instantly take away mine, for I want to have
yours."
Going on two pages further, we find these words:--"But the Negroes, they
say, are a race born for slavery; their dispositions are narrow,
treacherous, and wicked; they themselves allow the superiority of our
understandings, and almost acknowledge the justice of our authority.
Yes; the minds of the Negroes are contracted, because slavery destroys
all the springs of the soul. They are wicked, but not equally so with
you. They are treacherous, because they are under no obligation to speak
truth to their tyrants. They acknowledge the superiority of our
understanding, because we have abused their ignorance. They allow the
justice of our authority, because we have abused their weakness."
"But these Negroes, it is further urged, were born slaves. Barbarians!
will you persuade me that a man can be the property of a sovereign, a
son the property of a father, a wife the property of a husband, a
domestic the property of a master, a Negro the property of a planter?"
But I have no time to follow this animated author, even by short
extracts, through the varied strains of eloquence which he displays upon
this occasion. I can only say that his labours entitle him to a high
station among the benefactors to the African race.
The third was Dr. PALEY, whose genius, talents, and learning have been
so eminently displayed in his writings in the cause of natural and
revealed religion. Dr. Paley did not write any essay expressly in favour
of the Africans. But in his _Moral Philosophy_, where he treated on
slavery, he took an opportunity of condemning, in very severe terms, the
continuance of it. In this work he defined what slavery was, and how it
might arise consistently with the law of nature; but he made an
exception against that which arose from the African trade. "The Slave
Trade," says he, "upon the coast of Africa, is not excused by these
principles. When slaves in that country are brought to market, no
questions, I believe, are asked about the origin or justice of the
vendor's title. It may be presumed, therefore, that this title is not
always, if it be ever, founded in any of the causes above assigned.
"But defect of right in the first purchase is the least crime with which
this traffic is chargeable. The natives are excited to war and mutual
depredation, for the sake of supplying their contracts, or furnishing
the markets with slaves. With this the wickedness begins. The slaves,
torn away from their parents, wives, and children, from their friends
and companions, from their fields and flocks, from their home and
country, are transported to the European settlements in America, with no
other accommodation on ship-board than what is provided for brutes. This
is the second stage of the cruelty, from which the miserable exiles are
delivered, only to be placed, and that for life, in subjection to a
dominion add system of laws, the most merciless and tyrannical that ever
were tolerated upon the face of the earth: and from all that can be
learned by the accounts of people upon the spot, the inordinate
authority which the plantation-laws confer upon the slaveholder is
exercised, by the English slaveholder especially, with rigour and
brutality.
"But necessity is pretended, the name under which every enormity is
attempted to be justified; and after all, what is the necessity? It has
never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it is
here, by hired servants. It is said, that it could not be cultivated
with quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labour of
slaves; by which means, a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells
for sixpence, could not be afforded under sixpence-halfpenny--and this
is the necessity!
"The great revolution which has taken place in the western world, may,
probably, conduce (and who knows but that it was designed) to accelerate
the fall of this abominable tyranny: and now that this contest and the
passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed, perhaps, a
season for reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its
assistance to the support of an institution replete with human misery,
was fit to be trusted with an empire, the most extensive that ever
obtained in any age or quarter of the world."
The publication of these sentiments may be supposed to have produced an
extensive effect. For _The Moral Philosophy_ was adopted early by some
of the colleges in our universities into the system of their education.
It soon found its way also into most of the private libraries of the
kingdom; and it was, besides, generally read and approved. Dr. Paley,
therefore, must be considered, as having been a considerable coadjutor
in interesting the mind of the public in favour of the oppressed
Africans.
In the year 1783, we find Mr. Sharp coming again into notice. We find
him at this time taking a part in a cause, the knowledge of which, in
proportion as it was disseminated, produced an earnest desire among all
disinterested persons for the abolition of the Slave Trade.
In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson
and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, Captain
Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel
threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the seas in
order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if
they had been lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial which
afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were
very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill
and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate,
and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating, "that if they
died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship;
but that if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the
underwriters." He selected, accordingly, one hundred and thirty-two of
the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately
thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate
on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the
remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of
victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea; but the
rest, with a noble resolution, would not suffer the officers to touch
them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.
The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled
act of wickedness was, that the captain discovered, when he made the
proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and
that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this,
that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if
Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a
shower of rain fell and continued for three days immediately after the
second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might
have filled many of their vessels[A] with water, and thus have prevented
all necessity for the destruction of the third.
[Footnote A: It appeared that they filled six.]
Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a
short-hand writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the
course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated
them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as
the guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as
principal minister of state. No notice, however, was taken by any of
these, of the information which had been thus sent them.
But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence
of the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an
account of it by Mr. Sharp, in the newspapers, made such an impression
upon others, that; new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find
Thomas Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured
Africans. He had lived to see his poem of _The Dying Negro_, which had
been published in 1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had
written a letter to a friend in America, who was the possessor of
slaves, to dissuade him by a number of arguments from holding such
property; and now, when the knowledge of the case of the ship Zong was
spreading, he published that letter under the title of Fragment of an
Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes.
In this same year, Dr. Porteus, Bishop of Chester, but now Bishop of
London, came forward as a new advocate for the natives of Africa. The
way in which he rendered them service, was by preaching a sermon in
their behalf, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Of
the wide circulation of this sermon, I shall say something in another
place, but much more of the enlightened and pious author of it, who from
this time never failed to aid, at every opportunity, the cause which he
had so ably undertaken.
In the year 1784, Dr. GREGORY produced his _Essays, Historical and
Moral_. He took an opportunity of disseminating in these a
circumstantial knowledge of the Slave Trade, and an equal abhorrence of
it at the same time. He explained the manner of procuring slaves in
Africa; the treatment of them on the passage, (in which he mentioned the
case of the ship Zong) and the wicked and cruel treatment of them in the
colonies. He recited and refuted also the various arguments adduced in
defence of the trade. He showed that it was destructive to our seamen.
He produced many weighty arguments also against the slavery itself. He
proposed clauses for an Act of Parliament for the abolition of both;
showing the good both to England and her colonies from such a measure,
and that a trade might be substituted in Africa, in various articles,
for that which he proposed to suppress. By means of the diffusion of
light like this, both of a moral and political nature; Dr. Gregory is
entitled to be ranked among the benefactors to the African race.
In the same year, Gilbert Wakefield preached a sermon at Richmond, in
Surrey, where, speaking of the people of this nation, he says, "Have we
been as renowned for a liberal communication of our religion and our
laws as for the possession of them! Have we navigated and conquered to
save, to civilize, and to instruct; or to oppress, to plunder, and to
destroy? Let India and Africa give the answer to these questions. The
one we have exhausted of her wealth and her inhabitants by violence, by
famine, and by every species of tyranny and murder. The children of the
other we daily carry from off the land of their nativity; like sheep to
the slaughter, to return no more. We tear them from every object of
their affection, or, sad alternative, drag them together to the horrors
of a mutual servitude! We keep them in the profoundest ignorance. We
gall them in a tenfold chain, with an unrelenting spirit of barbarity,
inconceivable to all but the spectators of it, unexampled among former
and other nations, and unrecorded even in the bloody registers of
heathen persecution. Such is the conduct of us enlightened Englishmen,
reformed Christians! Thus have we profited by our superior advantages,
by the favour of God, by the doctrines and example of a meek and lowly
Savior. Will not the blessings which we have abused loudly testify
against us? Will not the blood which we have shed cry from the ground
for vengeance upon our sins?"
In the same year, James Ramsay, vicar of Teston in Kent, became also an
able, zealous, and indefatigable patron of the African cause. This
gentleman had resided nineteen years in the island of St. Christopher,
where he had observed the treatment of the slaves, and had studied the
laws relating to them. On his return to England, yielding to his own
feelings of duty and the solicitations of some amiable friends, he
published a work, which he called _An Essay on the Treatment and
Conversion of the African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies_. After
having given an account of the relative situation of master and slave in
various parts of the world, he explained the low and degrading situation
which the Africans held in society in our own islands. He showed that
their importance would be increased; and the temporal interest of their
masters promoted, by giving them freedom, and by granting them other
privileges. He showed the great difficulty of instructing them in the
state in which they then were, and such as he himself had experienced,
both in his private and public attempts, and such as others had
experienced also. He stated the way in which private attempts of this
nature might probably be successful. He then answered all objections
against their capacities, as drawn from philosophy, form, anatomy, and
observation; and vindicated these from his own experience. And lastly,
he threw out ideas for the improvement of their condition, by an
establishment of a greater number of spiritual pastors among them; by
giving them more privileges than they then possessed; and by extending
towards them the benefits of a proper police. Mr. Ramsay had no other
motive for giving this work to the public, than that of humanity, of a
wish to serve this much-injured part of the human species. For he
compiled it at the hazard of forfeiting that friendship, which he had
contracted with many during his residence in the islands, and of
suffering much in his private property, as well as subjecting himself to
the ill-will and persecution of numerous individuals.
The publication of this book by one who professed to have been so long
resident in the islands, and to have been an eyewitness of facts,
produced, as may easily be supposed, a good deal of conversation, and
made a considerable impression, but particularly at this time, when a
storm was visibly gathering over the heads of the oppressors of the
African race. These circumstances occasioned one or two persons to
attempt to answer it, and these answers brought Mr. Ramsay into the
first controversy ever entered into on this subject, during which, as is
the case in most controversies, the cause of truth was spread.
The works which Mr. Ramsay wrote upon this subject were, the essay just
mentioned, in 1784. _An Inquiry_, also, _into the Effects of the
Abolition of the Slave Trade_, in 1784; _A Reply to Personal Invectives
and Objections_, in 1785; _A Letter to James Tobin, Esq._, in 1787;
_Objections to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with Answers_; and _An
Examination of Harris's Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the
Slave Trade_, in 1788; and _An Address on the proposed Bill for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade_, in 1789. In short, from the time when he
first took up the cause, he was engaged in it till his death, which was
not a little accelerated by his exertions. He lived, however, to see
this cause in a train of parliamentary inquiry, and he died satisfied;
being convinced, as he often expressed, that the investigation must
inevitably lead to the total abolition of the Slave Trade.
In the next year, that is, in the year 1785, another advocate was seen
in Monsieur Necker, in his celebrated work on the _French Finances_,
which had just been translated into the English language from the
original work, in 1784. This virtuous statesman, after having given his
estimate of the population and revenue of the French West Indian
colonies, proceeds thus:--"The colonies of France contain, as we have
seen, near five hundred thousand slaves, and it is from the number of
these poor wretches that the inhabitants set a value on their
plantations. What a dreadful prospect! and how profound a subject for
reflection! Alas! how little are we both in our morality and our
principles! We preach up humanity, and yet go every year to bind in
chains twenty thousand natives of Africa! We call the Moors barbarians
and ruffians, because they attack the liberty of Europeans at the risk
of their own; yet these Europeans go, without danger, and as mere
speculators, to purchase slaves by gratifying the avarice of their
masters, and excite all those bloody scenes which are the usual
preliminaries of this traffic!" He goes on still further in the same
strain. He then shows the kind of power which has supported this
execrable trade. He throws out the idea of a general compact, by which
all the European nations should agree to abolish it; and he indulges the
pleasing hope that it may take place even in the present generation.
In the same year we find other coadjutors coming before our view, but
these in a line different from that in which any other belonging to this
class had yet moved. Mr. George White, a clergyman of the established
church, and Mr. John Chubb, suggested to Mr. William Tucket, the mayor
of Bridgewater, where they resided, and to others of that town, the
propriety of petitioning parliament for the abolition of the Slave
Trade. This petition was agreed upon, and, when drawn up, was as
follows:--