Volume Ii Part 6 (1/2)

Man, through all ages of revolving time, Unchanging man, in every varying clime, Deems his own land of every land the pride, Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside; His home the spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

And is the Negro outlawed from his birth?

Is he alone a stranger on the earth?

Is there no shed whose peeping roof appears So lovely that it fills his eyes with tears?

No land, whose name, in exile heard, will dart Ice through his veins and lightning through his heart?

Ah! yes; beneath the beams of brighter skies His home amidst his father's country lies; There with the partner of his soul he shares Love-mingled pleasures, love-divided cares; There, as with nature's warmest filial fire, He soothes his blind and feeds his helpless sire; His children, sporting round his hut, behold How they shall cherish him when he is old, Trained by example from their tenderest youth To deeds of charity and words of truth.

Is HE not blest? Behold, at closing day, The Negro village swarms abroad to play; He treads the dance, through all its rapturous rounds, To the wild music of barbarian sounds; Or, stretched at ease where broad palmettos shower Delicious coolness in his shadowy bower, He feasts on tales of witchcraft, that give birth To breathless wonder or ecstatic mirth: Yet most delighted when, in rudest rhymes, The minstrel wakes the song of elder times, When men were heroes, slaves to Beauty's charms, And all the joys of life were love and arms.

Is not the Negro blest? His generous soil With harvest plenty crowns his simple toil; More than his wants his flocks and fields afford: He loves to greet a stranger at his board: ”The winds were roaring and the White Man fled; The rains of night descended on his head; The poor White Man sat down beneath our tree: Weary and faint and far from home was he: For him no mother fills with milk the bowl, No wife prepares the bread to cheer his soul.

Pity the poor White Man, who sought our tree; No wife, no mother, and no home has he.”

Thus sung the Negro's daughters;--once again, O that the poor White Man might hear that strain!

Whether the victim of the treacherous Moor, Or from the Negro's hospitable door Spurned as a spy from Europe's hateful clime, And left to perish for thy country's crime, Or destined still, when all thy wanderings cease, On Albion's lovely lap to rest in peace, Pilgrim! in heaven or earth, where'er thou be, Angels of mercy guide and comfort thee!

A note to the same poem gives the following record of facts, substantiated in a court of justice, in which there can be only one answer to the question, ”Which were the savages?”

”In this year (1783) certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson and others of Liverpool, in the case of the s.h.i.+p Zong, Captain Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, in order to defraud them by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had been lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial which afterwards came on, it appeared that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died, and several were ill and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsal, the mate, and others to throw several of them overboard, stating that 'if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the s.h.i.+p, but that if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters.'

He selected accordingly one hundred and thirty-two of the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea, but the rest, with a n.o.ble resolution, would not suffer the offices to touch them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.

”The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled act of wickedness was that the captain discovered, when he made the proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this, that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a shower of rain fell, and continued for three days, immediately after the second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their vessels with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the destruction of the third.

”Mr. Granville Sharp (who after many years of struggle first obtained the decision of a court of justice that there ARE no slaves in England) was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a shorthand writer to take down the facts which should come out in the course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as princ.i.p.al Minister of state. No notice, however, was taken by any of these of the information which had been thus sent them.”

Another incident of the Middle Pa.s.sage suggested to James Montgomery a poem called ”The Voyage of the Blind.”

”It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.”