prove that the Slave Trade was the source of the tragedies
acted upon that extensive continent. Some had
endeavoured to palliate this circumstance; but there
was not one who did not more or less admit it to be
true. By one the Slave Trade was called the concurrent
cause, by the majority it was acknowledged to be the
principal motive, of the African wars. The same
might be said with respect to those instances of treachery
and injustice, in which individuals were concerned.
And here he was sorry to observe that our own countrymen
were often guilty. He would only at present advert
to the tragedy at Calabar, where two-large African
villages, having been for some time at war, made peace.
This peace was to have, been ratified by intermarriages;
but some of our captains, who were there, seeing their
trade would be stopped for a while, sowed dissension
again between them. They actually set one village
against the other, took a share in the contest, massacred
many of the inhabitants, and carried others of them
away as slaves. But shocking as this transaction
might appear, there was not a single history of Africa
to be read, in which scenes of as atrocious a nature
were not related. They, he said, who defended
this trade, were warped and blinded by their own interests,
and would not be convinced of the miseries they were
daily heaping on their fellow creatures. By the
countenance, they gave it, they had reduced the inhabitants
of Africa to a worse state than that of the most barbarous
nation. They had destroyed what ought to have
been the bond of union and safety among them; they
had introduced discord and anarchy among them; they
had set kings against their subjects, and subjects
against each other; they had rendered every private
family wretched; they had, in short, given birth to
scenes of injustice and misery not to be found in
any other quarter of the globe.
Having said thus much on the subject of procuring
slaves in, Africa, he would now go to that of the
transportation of them. And here he had fondly
hoped, that when men with affections and feelings like
our own had been torn from their country, and everything
dear to them, he should have found some mitigation
of their sufferings; but the sad reverse was the case.
This was the most wretched part of the whole subject.
He was incapable, of impressing the House with what
he felt upon it. A description of their conveyance
was impossible. So much misery condensed, in
so little room was more than the human imagination
had ever before conceived. Think only of six
hundred persons linked together, trying to get rid
of each other, crammed in a close vessel with every
object that was nauseous and disgusting, diseased,
and struggling with all the varieties of wretchedness.
It seemed impossible to add anything more to human
misery. Yet shocking as this description must
be felt to be by every man, the transportation had
been described by several witnesses from Liverpool
to be a comfortable conveyance. Mr. Norris had