The abolition of slavery, and the retrieval of specie in this colony, are the subjects on which I would bespeak their attention.--
Long and serious reflections upon the nature and consequences of slavery have convinced me, that it is a violation both of justice and religion; that it is dangerous to the safety of the community in which it prevails; that it is destructive to the growth of arts and sciences; and lastly, that it produces a numerous and very fatal train of vices, both in the slave and in his master.
To prove these a.s.sertions, shall be the purpose of the following essay.
That slavery then is a violation of justice, will plainly appear, when we consider what justice is. It is truly and simply defined, as by _Justinian, constans et perpetua voluntas ejus suum cuique tribuendi_; a constant endeavour to give every man his right.
Now, as freedom is unquestionably the birth-right of all mankind, _Africans_ as well as _Europeans_, to keep the former in a state of slavery, is a constant violation of that right, and therefore of justice.
The ground on which the civilians who favour slavery, admit it to be just, namely, consent, force, and birth, is totally disputable; for surely a man"s own will and consent cannot be allowed to introduce so important an innovation into society, as slavery, or to make himself an outlaw, which is really the state of a slave; since neither consenting to, nor aiding the laws of the society in which he lives, he is neither bound to obey them, nor ent.i.tled to their protection.
To found any right in force, is to frustrate all right, and involve every thing in confusion, violence, and rapine. With these two, the last must fall; since, if the parent cannot justly be made a slave, neither can the child be born in slavery. "The law of nations, says Baron _Montesquieu_, has doomed prisoners to slavery, to prevent their being slain; the _Roman_ civil law permitted debtors, whom their creditors might treat ill, to sell themselves. And the law of nature requires that children, whom their parents, being slaves, cannot maintain, should be slaves like them. These reasons of the civilians are not just; it is not true that a captive may be slain, unless in a case of absolute necessity; but if he hath been reduced to slavery, it is plain that no such necessity existed, since he was not slain. It is not true that a free man can sell himself, for sale supposes a price; but a slave and his property becomes immediately that of his master; the slave can therefore receive no price, nor the master pay, &c. And if a man cannot sell himself, nor a prisoner of war be reduced to slavery, much less can his child." Such are the sentiments of this ill.u.s.trious civilian; his reasonings, which I have been obliged to contract, the reader interested in this subject will do well to consult at large.
Yet even these rights of imposing slavery, questionable, nay, refutable as they are, we have not to authorise the bondage of the _Africans_. For neither do they consent to be our slaves, nor do we purchase them of their conquerors. The _British_ merchants obtain them from _Africa_ by violence, artifice, and treachery, with a few trinkets to prompt those unfortunate people to enslave one another by force or stratagem.
Purchase them indeed they may, under the authority of an act of the British parliament. An act entailing upon the _Africans_, with whom we are not at war, and over whom a British parliament could not of right a.s.sume even a shadow of authority, the dreadful curse of perpetual slavery, upon them and their children for ever. _There cannot be in nature, there is not in all history, an instance in which every right of men is more flagrantly violated._ The laws of the antients never authorised the making slaves, but of those nations whom they had conquered; yet they were heathens, and we are christians. They were misled by a monstrous religion, divested of humanity, by a horrible and barbarous worship; we are directed by the unerring precepts of the revealed religion we possess, enlightened by its wisdom, and humanized by its benevolence; before them, were G.o.ds deformed with pa.s.sions, and horrible for every cruelty and vice; before us, is that incomparable pattern of meekness, charity, love and justice to mankind, which so transcendently distinguished the Founder of christianity, and his ever amiable doctrines.
Reader, remember that the corner stone of your religion, is to do unto others as you would they should do unto you; ask then your own heart, whether it would not abhor any one, as the most outrageous violater of that and every other principle of right, justice, and humanity, who should make a slave of you and your posterity for ever! Remember, that G.o.d knoweth the heart; lay not this flattering unction to your soul, that it is the custom of the country; that you found it so, that not your will; but your necessity, consents. Ah! think how little such an excuse will avail you in that aweful day, when your Saviour shall p.r.o.nounce judgment on you for breaking a law too plain to be misunderstood, too sacred to be violated. If we say we are christians, yet act more inhumanly and unjustly than heathens, with what dreadful justice must this sentence of our blessed Saviour fall upon us, "_Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven."_ Matth. vii. 21. Think a moment how much your temporal, your eternal welfare depends upon an abolition of a practice which deforms the image of your G.o.d, tramples on his revealed will, infringes the most sacred rights, and violates humanity.
Enough, I hope, has been a.s.serted, to prove that slavery is a violation of justice and religion. That it is dangerous to the safety of the state in which it prevails, may be as safely a.s.serted.
What one"s own experience has not taught; that of others must decide.
From hence does history derive its utility; for being, when truly written, a faithful record of the transactions of mankind, and the consequences that flowed from them, we are thence furnished with the means of judging what will be the probable effect of transactions, similar among ourselves.
We learn then from history, that slavery, wherever encouraged, has sooner or later been productive of very dangerous commotions. I will not trouble my reader here with quotations in support of this a.s.sertion, but content myself with referring those, who may be dubious of its truth, to the histories of Athens, Lacedemon, Rome, and Spain.
How long, how b.l.o.o.d.y and destructive was the contest between the Moorish slaves and the native Spaniards? and after almost deluges of blood had been shed, the Spaniards obtained nothing more than driving them into the mountains.--Less b.l.o.o.d.y indeed, though, not less alarming, have been the insurrections in Jamaica; and to imagine that we shall be for ever exempted from this calamity, which experience teaches us to be inseparable from slavery, so encouraged; is an infatuation as astonishing as it will be surely fatal:--&c. &c.
EXTRACT
OF A
SERMON
PREACHED BY THE
BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER,
Before the SOCIETY For the PROPAGATION of the GOSPEL, at the anniversary meeting on the 21st of _February_, 1766.
From the free-savages, I now come (the last point I propose to consider) to the savages in bonds. By these I mean the vast mult.i.tudes yearly stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to their great idol, the G.o.d OF GAIN. But what then? say these sincere worshippers of _Mammon_; they are our own property which we offer up.
Gracious G.o.d! to talk (as in herds of cattle) of property in rational creatures! creatures endowed with all our faculties; possessing all our qualities but that of colour; our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense.
But, alas! what is there in the infinite abuses of society which does not shock them? Yet nothing is more certain in itself, and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to a.s.sert his freedom. In excuse of this violation, it hath been pretended, that though indeed these miserable out-casts of humanity be torn from their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby become the happier, and their condition the more eligible. But who are You, who pretend to judge of another man"s happiness? That state, which each man, under the guidance of his Maker, forms for himself, and not one man for another? To know what const.i.tutes mine or your happiness, is the sole prerogative of Him who created us, and cast us in so various and different moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhappiness amidst their native woods and deserts? Or, rather, let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their lordly masters? where they see, indeed, the accommodations of civil life, but see them all pa.s.s to others, themselves unbenefited by them.
Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness.
And then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a part. A return so pa.s.sionately longed for, that despairing of happiness here, that is, of escaping the chains of their cruel task-masters, they console themselves with feigning it to be the gracious reward of heaven in their future state, which I do not find their haughty masters have as yet concerned themselves to invade. The less hardy, indeed, wait for this felicity till over-wearied nature sets them free; but the more resolved have recourse even to self-violence, to force a speedier pa.s.sage.
But it will be still urged, that though what is called human happiness be of so fantastic a nature, that each man"s imagination creates it for himself, yet human misery is more substantial and uniform throughout all the tribes of mankind. Now, from the worst of human miseries, the savage Africans, by these forced emigrations, are intirely secured; such as the being perpetually hunted down like beasts of prey or profit, by their more savage and powerful neighbours--In truth, a blessed change!--from being hunted to being caught. But who are they that have set on foot this general HUNTING? Are they not these very civilized violaters of humanity themselves? who tempt the weak appet.i.tes, and provoke the wild pa.s.sions of the fiercer savages to prey upon the rest.
THE END.