Postscript.—It is hoped, for the honour and humanity of our Government, that they will resist the clamour to withdraw the Cruisers from the Western Coast of Africa, and that they will not withdraw the British Cruisers. If a blow is to be struck, let it be struck at Cuba, or the Brazils, and not on the defenceless Africans, because they are defenceless. If a burglar prowls about, a whole neighbourhood is on the alert to protect itself against his depredations. If a band of pirates swarm in a sea or infest our coasts, a fleet is fitted out to capture them. But it is attempted to let loose upon weak, defenceless Africa a legion of pirates and murderers—for such will be the result if the British Cruisers are withdrawn from the Western Coast.
Footnotes:
[1] See the newspapers for the correspondence between some of the Bishops of our Church and the Premier. As the question is, Whether Dr. Hampden be a Heretic or a Christian? I may here observe that the term "Christian" is used in the following pages for "European." To the epithet "Christian," in the strict sense of the term, I have no other pretensions than that of being a conscientious reader of the New Testament.
[2] "Une et indivisible."
[3] Lord Brougham, in his Life of Pitt, very properly takes off some discount from the Anti-Slavery zeal of this great Statesman, for being so tardy in the work of Abolition, and allowing his Under Secretaries and subordinate Ministers to support the Slave-Trade against himself, and whilst he was advocating its extinction.
[4] "It is impossible to deny the advancement of civilization in that zone of the African continent which has formed the field of our inquiry. Yet barbarism is there supported by natural circumstances with which it is vain to think of coping. It may be doubted whether, if mankind had inhabited the earth only in populous and adjoining communities, slavery would have ever existed. The Desert, if it be not absolutely the root of the evil, has, at least, been from the earliest times the great nursery of slave hunters. The demoralization of the towns on the Southern borders of The Desert has been pointed out; and if the vast extent be considered of the region in which man has no riches but slaves, no enjoyment but slaves, no article of trade but slaves, and where the hearts of wandering thousands are closed against pity by the galling misery of life, it will be difficult to resist the conviction that the solid buttress on which slavery rests in Africa, is—The Desert." (p. 139.)
[5] See Mr. Duncan's Travels in Western Africa.
