Part 3 (1/2)
Neither was Richard Savage forgetful in his poems of the _Injured Africans_: he warns their oppressors of a day of retribution for their barbarous conduct. Having personified Public Spirit, he makes her speak on the subject in the following manner:--
Let by my specious name no tyrants rise, And cry, while they enslave, they civilize!
Know, Liberty and I are still the same Congenial--ever mingling flame with flame!
Why must I Afric's sable children see Vended for slaves, though born by nature free, The nameless tortures cruel minds invent Those to subject whom Nature equal meant?
If these you dare (although unjust success Empowers you now unpunished, to oppress), Revolving empire you and yours may doom-- (Rome all subdu'd--yet Vandals vanquish'd Rome) Yes--Empire may revolt--give them the day, And yoke may yoke, and blood may blood repay.
Wallis, in his _System of the Laws of Scotland_, maintains, that ”neither men nor governments have a right to sell those of their own species. Men and their liberty are neither purchaseable nor saleable.”
And, after arguing the case, he says, ”This is the law of nature, which is obligatory on all men, at all times, and in all places.--Would not any of us, who should be s.n.a.t.c.hed by pirates from his native land, think himself cruelly abused, and at all times ent.i.tled to be free? Have not these unfortunate Africans, who meet with the same cruel fate, the same right? Are they not men as well as we? And have they not the same sensibility? Let us not, therefore, defend or support an usage, which is contrary to all the laws of humanity.”
In the year 1750, the reverend Griffith Hughes, rector of St. Lucy, in Barbados, published his Natural History of that island. He took an opportunity, in the course of it, of laying open to the world the miserable situation of the poor Africans, and the waste of them by hard labour and other cruel means, and he had the generosity to vindicate their capacities from the charge, which they who held them in bondage brought against them, as a justification of their own wickedness in continuing to deprive them of the rights of men.
Edmund Burke, in his account of the European settlements, (for this work is usually attributed to him,) complains ”that the Negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse circ.u.mstances, than what any people in their condition suffer, in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time.
Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste, which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth.” And he goes on to advise the planters, for the sake of their own interest, to behave like good men, good masters, and good Christians, and to impose less labour upon their slaves, and to give them recreation on some of the grand festivals, and to instruct them in religion, as certain preventives of their decrease.
An anonymous author of a pamphlet, ent.i.tled, _An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America_, seems to have come forward next.
Speaking of slavery there, he says, ”It is shocking to humanity, violative of every generous sentiment, abhorrent utterly from the Christian religion.--There cannot be a more dangerous maxim than that necessity is a plea for injustice, for who shall fix the degree of this necessity? What villain so atrocious, who may not urge this excuse, or, as Milton has happily expressed it,
And with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excuse his devilish deed?
”That our colonies,” he continues, ”want people, is a very weak argument for so inhuman a violation of justice.--Shall a civilized, a Christian nation encourage slavery, because the barbarous, savage, lawless African hath done it? To what end do we profess a religion whose dictates we so flagrantly violate? Wherefore have we that pattern of goodness and humanity, if we refuse to follow it? How long shall we continue a practice which policy rejects, justice condemns, and piety revolts at?”
The poet Shenstone, who comes next in order, seems to have written an elegy on purpose to stigmatize this trade. Of this elegy I shall copy only the following parts:--
See the poor native quit the Libyan sh.o.r.es, Ah! not in love's delightful fetters bound!
No radiant smile his dying peace restores, No love, nor fame, nor friends.h.i.+p, heals his wound.
Let vacant bards display their boasted woes; Shall I the mockery of grief display?
No; let the muse his piercing pangs disclose, Who bleeds and weeps his sum of life away!
On the wild heath in mournful guise he stood, Ere the shrill boatswain gave the hated sign; He dropt a tear unseen into the flood, He stole one secret moment to repine--
”Why am I ravish'd from my native strand?
What savage race protects this impious gain?
Shall foreign plagues infest this teeming land, And more than sea-born monsters plough the main?
Here the dire locusts' horrid swarms prevail; Here the blue asps with livid poison swell; Here the dry dipsa writhes his sinuous mail; Can we not here secure from envy dwell?
When the grim lion urged his cruel chase, When the stern panther sought his midnight prey; What fate reserved me for this Christian race?
O race more polished, more severe than they!
Yet sh.o.r.es there are, bless'd sh.o.r.es for us remain, And favour'd isles, with golden fruitage crown'd, Where tufted flow'rets paint the verdant plain, And every breeze shall medicine every wound.”
In the year 1755, Dr. Hayter, bishop of Norwich, preached a sermon before the _Society for the Propagation of the Gospel_, in which he bore his testimony against the continuance of this trade.