THE NEGRO'S COMPLAINT.
Forced from home and all its pleasures,
Afric's coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger's treasures,
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enroll'd me,
Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit Nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
Why did all-creating Nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there One who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?
Hark! he answers—wild tornadoes,
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric's sons should undergo,
Fix'd their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer—No.
By our blood in Afric wasted,
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart;
All sustain'd by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart:
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard, and stronger,
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!
See Poems.
To the Christian and philosophic mind, which is accustomed to trace the origin and operation of principles that powerfully affect the moral dignity and happiness of nations, it is interesting to inquire what is the rise of that high moral feeling, that keen and indignant sense of wrong and oppression, which form so distinguishing a feature in the character of this country? Why, too, when the crime and guilt of slavery attached to France, to Portugal, to Spain, to Holland, and above all to America, not less justly than to ourselves, was Great Britain the first to lead the way in this noble career of humanity, and to sacrifice sordid interest to the claims of public duty?
This inquiry is by no means irrelevant, because the same question suggested itself to the mind of Cowper, and he thus answers it—
The cause, though worth the search, may yet elude
Conjecture and remark, however shrewd.
They take perhaps a well-directed aim,
Who seek it in his climate and his frame.
Liberal in all things else, yet Nature here
With stern severity deals out the year.
Winter invades the spring, and often pours
A chilling flood on summer's drooping flowers;
Unwelcome vapours quench autumnal beams,
Ungenial blasts attending curl the streams;
The peasants urge their harvest, ply the fork
With double toil, and shiver at their work;
Thus with a rigour, for his good designed,
She rears her favourite man of all mankind.
His form robust and of elastic tone,
Proportioned well, half muscle and half bone,
Supplies with warm activity and force
A mind well-lodged, and masculine of course.
Hence liberty, sweet liberty inspires,
And keeps alive his fierce but noble fires.[409]
Table Talk.
The foundation of this high national feeling must evidently be sought in the causes here specified. To these may be added the influence arising from the constitution of our government, the character of our institutions, and the freedom with which every subject undergoes the severe ordeal of public discussion.
May it always be so wisely directed, as never to incur the risk of becoming the foaming and heedless torrent; but rather resemble the majestic river, so beautifully described by the poet Denham:
"Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."
Cooper's Hill.
It is due, however, to the venerable name of Granville Sharp, to record, more particularly, the zeal with which he called forth and fostered these feelings, and devoted his time, his talents, and his labours, in exposing the cruelty and injustice of this nefarious traffic. He brought it to the test of Scripture. He refuted those arguments which pretended to justify the practice, from the supposed authority of the Mosaic law, by proving that the servitude there mentioned was a limited service, and accompanied by the year of release[410] and jubilee. He cited passages from that law, expressly prohibiting and condemning it. "Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Exod. xxiii. 9. "If a stranger sojourn with thee, in your land, ye shall not vex the stranger," &c. &c. "Thou shalt love him as thyself." Lev. xix. 33. "Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Deut. x. 17-19. He showed at large that slavery was directly opposed to the genius and spirit of the Gospel, which connects all mankind in the bonds of fellowship and love. He adduced the beautiful and affecting remark of St. Paul, who, in his address to Philemon, when he beseeches him to take back his servant Onesimus, observes, and yet "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord." Ver. 16.
After urging various other arguments, and insisting largely, in his "Law of Retribution," on the extent and enormity of the national sin, and its fearful consequences, he draws an affecting picture of the desolation of Africa, quoting the following words of his illustrious ancestor, Archbishop Sharp: "That Africa, which is not now more fruitful of monsters, than it was once of excellently wise and learned men; that Africa, which formerly afforded us our Clemens, our Origen, our Tertullian, our Cyprian, our Augustine, and many other extraordinary lights in the church of God; that famous Africa, in whose soil Christianity did thrive so prodigiously, and which could boast of so many flourishing churches, alas! is now a wilderness. 'The wild boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it,' 'and it bringeth forth nothing but briars and thorns.'"
Such were the appeals of Granville Sharp to the generation that is now swept away by the rapid current of time. The grave has entombed their prejudices. The great judgment day will pronounce the final verdict. It is a melancholy proof of the slow progress of truth, and of the influence of prejudice and error, that De Las Casas pleaded the injustice of slavery, before the Emperor Charles V. nearly three hundred years from the present time; and that it required this long and protracted period, before the cause of humanity finally triumphed; and even then, the triumph was restricted to the precincts of one single kingdom. That kingdom is Great Britain! Five millions are said to be still reserved in bondage and oppression.[411] May this foul stain be speedily effaced; and civilized nations learn, that they can never found a title to true greatness till the rights of humanity and justice are publicly recognised and respected!
We could have dwelt with delight on the zeal of Ramsay and Clarkson, but our limits do not allow further digression, and the name of Cowper demands and merits our attention.
How much the cause is indebted to his zeal and benevolence, may be collected from the following extracts.
Canst thou, and honoured with a Christian name,
Buy what is woman-born, and feel no shame;
Trade in the blood of innocence, and plead
Expedience as a warrant for the deed?
So may the wolf, whom famine has made bold
To quit the forest and invade the fold:
So may the ruffian, who with ghostly glide,
Dagger in hand, steals close to your bedside;
Not he, but his emergence forced the door,
He found it inconvenient to be poor.
Charity.
The verses which we next insert unite the inspiration of poetry with the manly feelings of the Englishman, and the ardour of genuine humanity.
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home.—Then why abroad?
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England: if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.[412]
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
The Task—The Timepiece.
But, highly as we appreciate the manly spirit of the Englishman, and the ardour of the philanthropist, in the foregoing verses, it is the missionary feeling, glowing in the following passage, that we most admire, as expressing the only true mode of requiting injured Africa. Let us not think that we have discharged the debt by an act of emancipation.[413] In conferring the boon of liberty, we restore only that of which they ought never to have been deprived. Restitution is not compensation. We have granted compensation to the proprietor, but where is the compensation to the negro? Never will the accumulated wrongs of ages be redressed, till we say to the sable sons of Africa, Behold your God! We have burst the chains from the body, let us now convey to them the tidings of a nobler freedom, a deliverance from a worse captivity than even African bondage and oppression. Let us announce to them that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men that dwell on the face of the earth." Acts xvii. 26. Let their minds be expanded by instruction, and the Bible, that great charter of salvation, be circulated wherever it can be read, that thus Britain may acquire a lasting and an honourable title to their gratitude and love.
Inform his mind; one flash of heavenly day
Would heal his heart, and melt his chains away.
"Beauty for ashes" is a gift indeed,
And slaves, by truth enlarged, are doubly freed.
Then would he say, submissive at thy feet,
While gratitude and love made service sweet—
"My dear deliverer out of hopeless night,
Whose bounty bought me but to give me light,
I was a bondman on my native plain,
Sin forged, and ignorance made fast, the chain;
Thy lips have shed instruction as the dew,
Taught me what path to shun, and what pursue;
Farewell my former joys! I sigh no more
For Africa's once loved, benighted shore;
Serving a benefactor, I am free,
At my best home, if not exiled from thee."
Charity.
That Ethiopia shall one day stretch out her hands unto God we have the assurance of a specific prophecy, as well as the general declarations of sacred scripture. "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee." At what time or in what manner the prophecy will be accomplished, it is not for us to determine. But should it please divine providence that the light of the gospel, through the instrumentality of Britain, should first spring forth from among that people in our own West India colonies, the land of their former servitude and oppression; should they subsequently, with bowels yearning for their own country, see fit to return, seized with a desire to communicate to the land of their nativity that gospel, the power of which they have previously felt for themselves; and should the hitherto inaccessible and unexplored parts of that vast continent thus become evangelised, such an event will furnish one of the most remarkable instances of an over-ruling Power, educing good out of positive evil, ever recorded in the annals of mankind.
We beg to add one more remark. The blacks are considered to be the descendants of Ham, who first peopled Africa. It pleased God to pronounce an awful curse on him and his posterity. "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be." For the long period of four thousand years has that curse impended over their heads. They have drunk the cup of bitterness to its lowest dregs. We conceive this terrible interdict to be now approaching to its termination. The curse began to be repealed, in part, when the abolition of slavery was first proclaimed by a British parliament. This was the seed-time of the future harvest: the example of Britain cannot be exhibited in vain: other nations must follow that example, or suffer the consequences of their neglect. They must concede the liberty which is the great inherent right of all mankind, or expect to behold it wrested from them amidst scenes of carnage and blood. Policy, justice, and humanity, therefore, require the concession. We have said that the repeal of the curse had begun in part; it will be completed when civil privileges shall be considered to be only the precursors of that more glorious liberty flowing from the communication of the gospel of peace. Then will Africa be raised up from her state of moral degradation, and be elevated to the rank and order of civilized nations. Then will she once more boast of her Cyprians, her Tertullians, and her Augustines; and the voice of the Lord, speaking from his high and holy place, will proclaim to her sable and afflicted sons, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord hath arisen upon thee." "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." Col. iii. 11.
How sweetly does the muse of Cowper proclaim the blessings of this spiritual liberty!
But there is yet a liberty, unsung
By poets, and by senators unprais'd,
Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rs
Of earth and hell confed'rate take away:
A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind:
Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more.
'Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from heav'n,
Bought with His blood, who gave it to mankind,
And seal'd with the same token. It is held
By charter, and that charter sanction'd sure
By th' unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts
All bear the royal stamp, that speaks them his,
They are august; but this transcends them all.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain
That hellish foes, confed'rate for his harm,
Can wind around him, but he casts it off
With as much ease as Sampson his green withes.
He looks abroad into the varied field
Of nature, and, though poor perhaps, compar'd
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scen'ry all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His t' enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel
But who, with filial confidence inspir'd,
Can lift to heav'n an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say—"My Father made them all!"
Winter Morning Walk.
The interesting nature of the subject, and its popularity at the present moment, must plead our excuse for these lengthened remarks and extracts. But we were anxious to prove how much this great cause of humanity was indebted, in the earlier stages of its progress, to the powerful appeals and representations of Cowper.
We now resume the Correspondence.
TO MRS. HILL.[414]
Weston Lodge, March 17, 1788.
My dear Madam,—A thousand thanks to you for your obliging and most acceptable present, which I received safe this evening. Had you known my occasions, you could not possibly have timed it more exactly. The Throckmorton family, who live in our neighbourhood, and who sometimes take a dinner with us, were, by engagement made with them two or three days ago, appointed to dine with us just at the time when your turkey will be in perfection. A turkey from Wargrave, the residence of my friend, and a turkey, as I conclude, of your breeding, stands a fair chance, in my account, to excel all other turkeys; and the ham, its companion, will be no less welcome.
I shall be happy to hear that my friend Joseph has recovered entirely from his late indisposition, which I was informed was gout; a distemper which, however painful in itself, brings at least some comfort with it, both for the patient and those who love him, the hope of length of days, and an exemption from numerous other evils. I wish him just so much of it as may serve for a confirmation of this hope, and not one twinge more.
Your husband, my dear madam, told me, some time since, that a certain library of mine, concerning which I have heard no other tidings these five-and-twenty-years, is still in being.[415] Hue and cry have been made after it in Old Palace-yard, but hitherto in vain. If he can inform a bookless student in what region, or in what nook, his long-lost volumes may be found, he will render me an important service.
I am likely to be furnished soon with shelves, which my cousin of New Norfolk-street is about to send me; but furniture for these shelves I shall not presently procure, unless by recovering my stray authors. I am not young enough to think of making a new collection, and shall probably possess myself of few books hereafter but such as I may put forth myself, which cost me nothing but what I can better spare than money—time and consideration.
I beg, my dear madam, that you will give my love to my friend, and believe me, with the warmest sense of his and your kindness,
Your most obliged and affectionate,
W. C.
TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[416]
Weston Lodge, March 17, 1788.
My dear Friend,—The evening is almost worn away while I have been writing a letter, to which I was obliged to give immediate attention. An application from a lady, and backed by you, could not be less than irresistible. The lady, too, a daughter of Mr. Thornton's.[417] Neither are these words of course: since I returned to Homer in good earnest, I turn out of my way for no consideration that I can possibly put aside.
With modern tunes I am unacquainted, and have therefore accommodated my verse to an old one; not so old, however, but that there will be songsters found old enough to remember it. The song is an admirable one for which it was made, and, though political, nearly, if not quite, as serious as mine. On such a subject as I had before me, it seems impossible not to be serious. I shall be happy if it meet with your and Lady Balgonie's approbation.
Of Mr. Bean I could say much; but have only time at present to say that I esteem and love him. On some future occasion I shall speak of him more at large.
We rejoice that Mrs. Newton is better, and wish nothing more than her complete recovery. Dr. Ford is to be pitied.[418] His wife, I suppose, is going to heaven; a journey which she can better afford to take than he to part with her.
I am, my dear friend, with our united love to you all three, most truly yours,
W. C.