Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 151 pages of information about Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants.

Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 151 pages of information about Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants.
of burden:  pretending to doubt, and some of them even presuming to deny, that the efficacy of the death of Christ extended to them.  Which is particularly noted in a book, intitled The Negroes and Indians advocate, dedicated to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote so long since as in the year 1680, by Morgan Godwyn, thought to be a clergyman of the church of England.[A] The same spirit of sympathy and zeal which stirred up the good Bishop of Chapia to plead with so much energy the kindred cause of the Indians of America, an hundred and fifty years before, was equally operating about a century past on the minds of some of the well disposed of that day; amongst others this worthy clergyman, having been an eye witness of the oppression and cruelty exercised upon the Negro and Indian slaves, endeavoured to raise the attention of those, in whose power it might be to procure them relief; amongst other matters, in his address to the Archbishop, he remarks in substance, “That the people of the island of Barbadoes were not content with exercising the greatest hardness and barbarity upon the Negroes, in making the most of their labour, without any regard to the calls of humanity, but that they had suffered such a slight and undervaluement to prevail in their minds towards these their oppressed fellow creatures, as to discourage any step being taken, whereby they might be made acquainted with the christian religion.  That their conduct towards their slaves was such as gave him reason to believe, that either they had suffered a spirit of infidelity, a spirit quite contrary to the nature of the gospel, to prevail in them, or that it must be their established opinion that the Negroes had no more souls than beasts; that hence they concluded them to be neither susceptible of religious impressions, nor fit objects for the redeeming grace of God to operate upon.  That under this persuasion, and from a disposition of cruelty, they treated them with far less humanity than they did their cattle; for, says he, they do not starve their horses, which they expect should both carry and credit them on the road; nor pinch the cow, by whose milk they are sustained; which yet, to their eternal shame, is too frequently the lot and condition of those poor people, from whose labour their wealth and livelihood doth wholly arise; not only in their diet, but in their cloathing, and overworking some of them even to death (which is particularly the calamity of the most innocent and laborious) but also in tormenting and whipping them almost, and sometimes quite, to death, upon even small miscarriages.  He apprehends it was from this prejudice against the Negroes, that arose those supercilious checks and frowns he frequently met with, when using innocent arguments and persuasions, in the way of his duty as a minister of the gospel, to labour for the convincement and conversion of the Negroes; being repeatedly told, with spiteful scoffings, (even by some esteemed religious) that the Negroes were no more susceptible of receiving
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Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.