A short sketch of the evidence for the abolition of the slave trade, delivered before a committee of the House of Commons

Virtue, say moralists, is so transcendently beautiful, that she need but be seen, to be universally admired: and is not VICE so hateful, that the more its features are viewed, the more it will be avoided? The traffic in the human species, particularly as carried on by the Europeans on the coast of Africa, has so horrible an aspect, that nothing, one should think, but the MASK, under which it has been concealed, could have prevented all the civilized nations in the world uniting to drive the detested Monster from the face of the earth. This MASK is, however, at length taken away, and the traffic stands exposed in all its real, unalterable deformity. The PEOPLE are now called upon to behold, to feel, and judge for themselves. The representations of former writers on this subject were roundly denied; the facts they stated were not only contradicted, but deemed impossible, and the authors themselves were accused of slander. Now we have a body of EVIDENCE to which to appeal; of evidence, possessing every essential of credibility. The witnesses have declared before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, what they themselves saw: they had the best opportunities of observation, and they are disinterested. And now it appears, that one half of the tale of human misery hath not been told: and that every principle, that can bind a man of honour and conscience,[1] loudly calls for the prohibition of the iniquitous traffic. Hard indeed must those hearts be, and inaccessible those understandings,[2] which such evidence cannot reach!

The Evidence delivered before the Select Committee of the House of Commons is very voluminous, occupying two thousand pages in folio. But a judicious Abstract and Arrangement of the Evidence, on the Part of the Petitioners for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,[3] has been published, and in a short compass, contains the evidence of well informed persons on that subject.

In the PREFACE to this important volume of evidence we read of rewards offered for taking run-away negroes _alive or dead_--of laws being required to be made to prevent the practice of _cutting off ears, noses, and tongues_--of breaking limbs and _putting out eyes_--to prevent distempered, maimed, and worn out negroes from infesting towns--to prevent aged and infirm negroes being driven from the plantations to starve. We meet also with such kind of PREAMBLES to acts as the following, viz.

‘Whereas the extreme cruelty and inhumanity of the managers, overseers, and book-keepers of estates, have frequently driven slaves into the woods, and occasioned rebellions, internal insurrections, &c. And whereas also it frequently happens, that slaves come to their deaths by hasty and severe blows and other improper treatment of overseers and book-keepers, in the heat of passion; and when such accidents do happen, the victims are entered in the plantation-books, as having died of convulsions, fits, or other causes not to be accounted for; and to conceal the real truth of the cause of the death of such slave or slaves, he or they is or are immediately put under ground, &c. Other preambles of a similar complexion, respecting the lodging, food, and clothes of negroes, are here to be met with. We also find that run-away negroes, when advertised, are described by the various brands upon their shoulders, breasts, cheeks, and foreheads. A woman is described with a wooden leg; a man as having both his ears cropt, and another by his nose and ears being cut off.’ Cornwall Chronicle, Nov. 7, 1789. Other instances occur within the year 1791.

The FIRST CHAPTER contains an account of the Enormities committed by the Natives of Africa on the persons of one another, to procure slaves for the Europeans, proved by the testimony of such as have visited that continent--and confirmed by accounts from the slaves themselves, after their arrival in the West-Indies.

Under this head, we learn that Kidnapping, or as the natives call it, Panyaring, is very common, that war is made on purpose to procure slaves. The king’s soldiers set fire to villages in the night, and seize the wretched inhabitants as they attempt to escape from the flames, and many perish, either by the fire or sword, in the execution of this horrid purpose. A Boy, who was carried away in the night from his father’s house, says, he believes both his parents were killed, he is sure that one was, and that many others were killed and some taken. Various instances are mentioned of consummate treachery employed in making captives. Kidnapping is professionally followed; large parties go up the country three hundred miles to drive down captives--they go a wood-ranging, and pick up every one they meet, and strip them naked. The purchasers generally say, they do not care how the sellers come by their slaves. Many are sold for crimes falsely imputed; the Judges participate in the profits of the sale, and are therefore strongly induced to condemn the innocent. Crimes are invented and multiplied for the purpose of traffic. The great men dress up and employ women, to entice young men to be connected with them, that they may be convicted of adultery and sold. The slaves are separated without the least regard to ties of consanguinity, or the pathetic expostulations and remonstrances of nature. When slave-ships are on the Coast the natives go armed, but are no where safe. The man, invited to drink with his neighbour, on rising to go, is seized by two of them and a large dog: and this mode of seizure is common.

By the Second Chapter it appears that the Europeans, by means of the trade in slaves, are the occasion of the before-mentioned enormities; that they sometimes use additional means to excite the natives to practise them, often attempt themselves to steal the natives, and succeed, force trade as they please, and are guilty of injustice in their dealings. In proof of this charge, we learn from the evidence that Africans receive European goods in exchange for slaves--that they declare when ships cease to come (as in times of war) slaves cease to be taken. African dealers make the Princes drunk, in order to overcome their aversion to unprovoked war: they furnish the natives with arms and ammunition and excite them to pillage.

The term war, in Africa, is used in general to signify pillage; and when many towns are seen blazing in the night, the natives say war is carrying on.

The Traders advance goods to Chiefs to induce them to seize their subjects or neighbours. Capt. Patterson set two villages at variance, and brought prisoners from both sides. It is not uncommon to make the natives drunk, and then buy them. General Rooke says, that it was proposed to him by three English captains of ships, to kidnap a hundred, or a hundred and fifty men, women, and children, king Damel’s subjects, who had come to Goree in consequence of the friendly intercourse between him and Damel: He refused and was much shocked by the proposition. They said such things had been done by a former governor. Two men, black traders, were invited on board, intoxicated, and captured when asleep. The Gregson’s people, in running down the coast, kidnapped thirty-two of the natives. The Dobson’s boat of Liverpool had stolen a man and woman; the captain on the remonstrance of Capt. Briggs, who told him, there would be no more trade if he did not deliver up his two captives, restored them; upon which the natives loaded a boat with yams, goats, fowls, honey, and palm wine, and would take nothing for them,--a striking instance of forgiveness of injuries, and of unmerited kindness!

We then meet with as opposite an exhibition of character as can possibly be conceived: three or four hundred Africans cruelly massacreed or carried off, by means of the treacherous contrivance of six English captains in Old Calabar River. But let us “turn our eyes for relief to some ordinary wickedness”[4]: Some consider frauds as a necessary part of the traffic; they put false heads into powder casks, cut off two or three yards from the middle of a piece of cloth, adulterate spirits, and steal back articles given. Besides these, there are others who pay in bottles, which hold but half the contents of the samples shewn; use false steel-yards and weights, and sell such guns as burst on firing; so that many of the natives of the windward coast, are without their fingers and thumbs on this account, and it has become a saying that these guns kill more out of the butt than the muzzle.

The Third Chapter contains an account of the transactions of the enslaved Africans, and of the method of confining, airing, feeding, and exercising them; incidents on the passage, and the manner of selling them when arrived at their destined ports; the deplorable situation of the refuse or sickly slaves; separation of relations and friends; mortality on the passage, and frequently after sale; and the causes of this mortality.

On being brought on board, says Dr. Trotter, they shew signs of extreme distress and despair, from a feeling of their situation, and regret at being torn from their friends and connexions. They sometimes dream of being in their own country, and when they awake shew their despair by howling and shrieking in a most dreadful manner. The women go into fits. In the course of the voyage, the slaves are chained to the deck every day from eight in the morning to four o’clock in the afternoon. They are fed twice a day with rice, yams, and horse-beans, and now and then a little beef and bread: after each of these two meals they are allowed half a pint of water: and are forced to jump in their irons, which, by the slave dealers, is called making them dance. This exercise frequently occasions the fetters to excoriate their limbs; and, when it is very painful to move at all, they are compelled to dance by a cat-of-nine-tails. The captains order them to sing, and they sing songs of sorrow, the subject of which are their wretched situation, and the idea of never returning home: the witness remembers the very words upon these occasions.

The slaves are so crouded below, that it is impossible to walk among them without treading upon them. Dr. Trotter has seen the slaves drawing their breath with all those laborious and anxious efforts for life, which are observed in expiring animals, subjected by experiment to foul air, or in the exhausted receiver of an air pump: they cry out--‘we are dying,’ and many are irrecoverably lost by suffocation, having had no previous signs of indisposition. They are closely wedged together, and have not so much room as a man in his coffin, either in length or breadth. They sometimes go down well at night, and are found dead in the morning. Alexander Falconbridge was never among them for ten minutes together below, but his shirt was as wet as if dipped in water. Sometimes the dead and living are found shackled together. They lie on the bare blanks, and the prominent parts of their bones, about the shoulder-blade and knees, have frequently been seen bare. No situation can be conceived so dreadful and disgusting as that of slaves when ill of the flux. In the Alexander (A. Falconbridge says) the deck was covered with blood and mucus, and resembled a slaughter-house; the stench and foul air were intolerable. The slaves, shackled together, frequently quarrel, and make a great disturbance. Some refuse food and medicine, and declare they want to die. In such cases compulsion is used. The ships are so fitted up as to prevent, by net-work, the slaves jumping overboard; notwithstanding which they often attempt it, and sometimes succeed, shewing signs of exultation in the very jaws of death. Some employ other means to destroy themselves, and others go mad: Some resolve to starve, and means are ineffectually used to wrench open their teeth: they persist in their resolution, and effect their purpose, in spite of the utmost pains to prevent it. When severely chastised for not taking their food they have looked up with a smile and said, “presently we shall be no more.” The thumbscrew is an instrument of torture, the application of it sometimes occasions mortifications, of which the negroes die. An instance occurs of the cruelty of a captain to an infant only nine months old, which one would suppose too shocking to be true, were it not corroborated by other specimens of as great cruelty in various parts of the evidence. After a series of tortures the infant expired, and its savage murderer, not yet satiated, would suffer none of the people on deck to throw the body overboard, but called the Mother, the wretched Mother, to perform this last sad office to her murdered child. Unwilling as it might naturally be supposed she was, to comply, “he beat her,” regardless of the indignant murmurs of her fettered countrymen, whom in the barbarous plenitude of secure tyranny, he permitted to be spectators of this horrible scene--“he beat her, until he made her take up the child and carry it to the side of the vessel, and then she dropped it into the sea, turning her head another way, that she might not see it!”[5] Another instance occurs in this chapter, not perhaps of more cruelty, though of greater magnitude.