before performing his voyage round the world, went with Sir John Hawkins in his expedition to the coast of Guinea, where taking in a cargo of slaves, they determined to steer for the Caribbee islands.”  How Queen Elizabeth suffered so grievous an infringement of the rights of mankind to be perpetrated by her subjects, and how she was persuaded, about the 30th year of her reign, to grant patents for carrying on a trade from the North part of the river Senegal, to an hundred leagues beyond Sierra Leona, which gave rise to the present African company, is hard to account for, any otherwise than that it arose from the misrepresentation made to her of the situation of the Negroes, and of the advantages it was pretended they would reap from being made acquainted with the christian religion.  This was the case of Lewis the XIIIth, King of France, who, Labat, in his account of the isles of America, tells us, “Was extremely uneasy at a law by which the Negroes of his colonies were to be made slaves; but it being strongly urged to him as the readiest means for their conversion to christianity, he acquiesced therewith.”  Nevertheless, some of the christian powers did not so easily give way in this matter; for we find,[C] “That cardinal Cibo, one of the Pope’s principal ministers of state, wrote a letter on behalf of the college of cardinals, or great council at Rome, to the missionaries in Congo, complaining that the pernicious and abominable abuse of selling slaves was yet continued, requiring them to remedy the same, if possible; but this the missionaries saw little hopes of accomplishing, by reason that the trade of the country lay wholly in slaves and ivory.”

[Footnote A:  Collection, vol. 1. p. 148.]

[Footnote B:  Ibid. 157.]

[Footnote C:  Collection, vol. 3, page 164.]

From the foregoing accounts, as well as other authentic publications of this kind, it appears that it was the unwarrantable lust of gain, which first stimulated the Portugueze, and afterwards other Europeans, to engage in this horrid traffic.  By the most authentic relations of those early times, the natives were an inoffensive people, who, when civilly used, traded amicably with the Europeans.  It is recorded of those of Benin, the largest kingdom in Guinea,[A]_That they were a gentle, loving people_; and Reynold says,[B] “They found more sincere proofs of love and good will from the natives, than they could find from the Spaniards and Portugueze, even tho’ they had relieved them from the greatest misery.”  And from the same relations there is no reason to think otherwise, but that they generally lived in peace amongst themselves; for I don’t find, in the numerous publications I have perused on this subject, relating to these early times, of there being wars on that coast, nor of any sale of captives taken in battle, who would have been otherwise sacrificed by the victors:[C] Notwithstanding some modern authors, in their publications relating to the West Indies, desirous of throwing a veil over the iniquity of the slave trade, have been hardy enough, upon meer supposition or report, to assert the contrary.