LETTER VII.
The principles of the Slave Trade, and the conduct of the officers on the voyage, are alike, in all the cases I have met with, whether from actual knowledge, or well-attested information. Publications therefore of this kind must grow tiresome, and be necessarily marked with an unfavourable degree of sameness; unfavorable, I mean, with regard to the patience of cold, dispassionate readers: for, taken in another point of view, it seems to give additional strength to the cause. Is it not a strong presumptive proof of the veracity of the circumstances that have been offered, that a number of men, unknown to each other, from different parts of the kingdom, dating their facts so long asunder, bringing their scenes of destruction from different places and vessels, without an invitation, without interest to serve, without any other purpose than that of supporting the cause of humanity, should concur in such a wonderful degree, that a warm reader would be almost led to imagine, that the observations were all made on one voyage, and the misery and murder the produce of the same vessel? And, yet, to a multitude of proofs is opposed the simple unsupported affirmation, that the practice is not general. I have again to declare, that though I made every possible inquiry, and had the very best opportunity for those inquiries, on the coast, in the West Indies, and in England, I never heard but of one Guinea vessel, in which the usage and conduct were in any degree of moderation. The lists were filled with famine, flogging, torture, and every horrid species of wanton barbarity and oppression.
I will not, Sir, press any farther upon your time. I hope you will excuse the inaccuracies to be found in these letters, and if I should have appeared either warm or earnest, let it be remembered how hard it is to be cold in such a cause; that these remarks have not been compiled from the patient and laborious stores of collected evidence; but come warm from a heart that has felt the miseries it describes, and from a recollection, that still smarts with the barbarities it has witnessed.
THE END.