I come now to the evil, as it has been proved to arise in the third case; or to consider the situation of the unhappy victims of the trade, when their painful voyages are over, or after they have been landed upon their destined shores.  And here we are to view them, first under the degrading light of cattle:  we are to see them examined, handled, selected, separated, and sold.  Alas! relatives are separated from relatives, as if, like cattle, they had no rational intellect, no power of feeling the nearness of relationship, nor sense of the duties belonging to the ties of life!  We are next to see them labouring; and this for the benefit of those to whom they are under no obligation, by any law either natural or divine, to obey.  We are to see them, if refusing the commands of their purchasers, however weary, or feeble, or indisposed, subject to corporal punishments, and if forcibly resisting them to death:  we are to see them in a state of general degradation and misery.  The knowledge which their oppressors have of their own crime, in having violated the rights of nature, and of the disposition of the injured to seek all opportunities of revenge, produces a fear which dictates to them the necessity of a system of treatment, by which they shall keep up a wide distinction between the two, and by which the noble feelings of the latter shall be kept down, and their spirits broken.  We are to see them again subject to individual persecution, as anger, or malice, or any bad passion may suggest:  hence the whip, the chain, the iron-collar! hence the various modes of private torture, of which so many accounts have been truly given.  Nor can such horrible cruelties be discovered so as to be made punishable, while the testimony of any number of the oppressed is invalid against the oppressors, however they may be offences against the laws.  And, lastly, we are to see their innocent offspring, against whose personal liberty the shadow of an argument cannot be advanced, inheriting all the miseries of their parents’ lot.

The evil then, as far as it has been hitherto viewed, presents to us, in its three several departments, a measure of human suffering not to be equalled—­not to be calculated—­not to be described.  But would that we could consider this part of the subject as dismissed! would that in each of the departments now examined there was no counterpart left us to contemplate!  But this cannot be; for if there be persons who suffer unjustly there must be others who oppress:  and if there be those who oppress, there must be to the suffering, which has been occasioned, a corresponding portion of immorality or guilt.