For which he could again purchase five slaves in Kaarta, where there is no want of those wretched beings. Is it then to be wondered at that those people view with a jealous eye our endeavours to suppress that trade, or throw obstacles in the way of our penetrating into the interior of their country, where they suppose we are attracted with no other view than the ultimate subversion of their religion and favourite traffic in their own flesh and blood; for it is impossible to convince them (at least by words) that we have no such intention: and as to think of persuading them that the extension of our geographical knowledge in visiting unknown countries at such risks and expense, or that the lawful increase of our commerce alone attract our steps, we might as well tell them that a white man never bought a slave. Whenever I spoke of the Niger, or my anxiety to see it, they asked me if there were no rivers in the country (we say) we inhabit; for the general belief is, as before stated, that we live exclusively in ships on the sea. The Moors too, who are general traders, and visit all the states of the interior in their commercial pursuits, are aware that any encouragement given by the native chiefs to our direct and friendly intercourse with them must tend to undermine their own trade, and in the course of time to remove from the eyes and understandings of those chiefs and their subjects the veil of superstition by which they are now shrouded. They therefore take advantage of the credit and respectability which in their characters as Maraboos they so invariably enjoy, to circulate reports prejudicial not only to our views in Africa (which they, if they do not really believe like the negroes, represent in the same way) but to our character as a people, whom they designate by the degrading appellation of Kafér, or unbeliever.
From the simple calculation and exposé just now made, it must be obvious that the native princes and traders have a strong and direct interest to oppose the abolition of slavery; although as regards the negro population it is equally clear that they have, if possible, a stronger and more direct interest to promote it by every means in their power. It is not my intention to enter into the very wide and comprehensive question growing out of this position, namely, whether the free negro, if independent of his master, could obtain sufficient employment, or, obtaining, would be ready to accept it. The first authorities of the present day, the ablest political economists of this and every other country, have decided that labour should be free; not only as conducive to the increased comforts of the labourer, but as decidedly favourable to the pecuniary interests of the employer and consumer. The African chiefs, like the owners of slaves in other countries, think they have no security for their authority but the maintenance of their people in slavery; and the prejudices of the negroes are such, the custom has been so long continued and by time become so inveterately strong, that no one having pretensions to superiority will perform any of those useful occupations which the best informed in civilised countries so usually attend to. There is in the habit of slavery a something much more difficult of cure than even in the oldest and most stormy passions of educated man: there is within it a debasement not to be found in any other state, and it seems as absolutely to chain men to the mere measure of their length and breadth upon the soil, as if their existence had no other object. The sun seems to roll his orbit without their observance, and the earth to yield its fruits without their gratitude; and yet they exhibit a deep sense of injury, and feel an insatiable thirst for revenge: such opposite feelings all being generated from the unwholesome effluvia of their religion—of which, however, more hereafter.
Another and very plausible reason was afforded the chiefs and people of the interior for not wishing our presence in their countries, and for exciting them to jealous and fearful conjectures as to the object of our visits. This was the forcible possession taken by the French of a position on the Foota frontier of the Waallo country, which although no doubt dictated by a laudable desire of improving the condition of those people and giving a stimulus to their commerce, was done in opposition to the wishes of the Foota chiefs and of those of the Moorish tribes of Bracknar and Trarsar, all of whom claimed a right to the place, and to defend which they made war on the King of Waallo, whose permission alone to establish and occupy a post on disputed ground was purchased by the Governor of Senegal.
The other chiefs remonstrated against this infringement of their rights, but receiving no satisfactory answer, joined their forces, and almost wholly destroyed the country, where all the horrors and misery so appallingly attendant on African wars were inflicted on and borne by the wretched inhabitants. A dreadful instance of the detestation in which the actual state of slavery is regarded by the free-born negro, so far as they are themselves concerned, occurred at the destruction of one of those towns. The wives of some chiefs who had either been killed or taken by the enemy determined not to survive their husbands’ or their country’s fall, and preferring death, even in its most terrifying shape, to slavery and the embraces of their captors,—suffered themselves and their young children to be burnt to death in a hut, where they had assembled with that determination, and which was set on fire by themselves. This affair and some others of a similar nature which took place about that time in the Senegal, although rendered necessary by acts of plunder, breach of contract, or treachery on the part of the chiefs, who are unfortunately much addicted to such conduct, were unavoidably attended with circumstances which, so far from being calculated to make those people regard the visits of Europeans to their country in a favourable light, had the effect of corroborating in a great measure the false and interested reports already but too sedulously circulated by the Moors and other native traders, and too credibly received by the several chiefs.
Another circumstance, which took place in Bambarra, must serve to convince every impartial reader that fears were really entertained by the chiefs as to the ultimate results of our communications with them.
At an interview which Mr. Dochard had with one of Dha’s head slaves at Bamakoo, where all the occurrences in the Senegal were not only known but much exaggerated, he was asked with a significant smile, “in case the Niger terminated in the sea and was found navigable to Sego, would our large vessels come up to that place, and our merchants settle there as the French had done in the Senegal?” The object of this question is too palpably evident to need any comment of mine, and Mr. Dochard’s answer, “that he doubted the possibility of large vessels ascending that river, or the wish of our merchants to try it without even settling there,” although in my opinion the best he could have given, did not remove from the minds of Dha and his ministers their apprehension of the consequences.
The main difficulty to our success in Africa decidedly results from the extent and influence of the Mohamedan religion. From the period of its introduction as affecting the mode of African legislation, which is scarcely a century since, the negroes, but particularly the chiefs, have lost the little of honesty or natural feeling which they before possessed. The doctrines of Mohamedanism are at right angles with those of Christianity, or if the doctrines be not so widely different, it is unquestionable that their influence produces the most melancholy and opposite results. Mohamedanism may direct the performance of moral duties, its theology may be wise and its ethics sound; but no abstract rules, however good or salutary, can operate upon the believers, while the interests of its ministers are at open war with them. In truth, we need not recur to Africa nor Mohamedanism to illustrate the truth of this position, for experience much nearer home has, while even these sheets are at the press, too forcibly proved it. Whatever then the written code of Mohamedanism may teach, I have invariably discovered that in practice, it countenances, if it does not actually generate, cunning, treachery, and an unquenchable thirst of litigation and revenge. It produces no good but from the meanest sense of fear, and its very profession is of itself considered as sufficient absolution from every atrocity committed to increase its disciples. But in Africa its pernicious tendency is still more exemplified than in those quarters where it has so long flourished with the rankest luxuriance.
The Africans in their pagan state were not liable to the same superstitions as they are and have been since their proselytism,—if it maybe so termed, because, their religion was not overloaded with ceremonies, and their priests had but a narrow and contracted influence. Mohamedanism has made them hypocrites as it keeps them slaves, and, while it prevails to its present extent, they must continue so. Essences are forgotten in the strict observance of a miserable ritual, and truth has lost its value and its splendour when only seen through the jaundiced instruction of peculating Maraboos. These jugglers in morality make whatever use they please of the victims of their sorcery, and if once they catch them in their toils, escape is almost literally impossible. The enmity which those ministers of false doctrine bear against our religion and ourselves naturally induce them to represent us in colours most terrifying to the converted negroes’ minds, by assuring them, that, although we say our intentions towards them are good, we are only under that cloak aiming at their total and eventual subjugation;—and, they bring forward the continuance of the slave trade by the French in the Senegal as a proof of our want of sincerity.
The negroes, however, receive a sort of bonus by their conversion to Mohamedanism. In the event of war waged on them by a Mohamedan power, they are spared, or at all events not compelled to feel the horrors which usually attend it.
But the crying sin of Mohamedanism and the main spring of its pernicious tendency, is the toleration of polygamy. I confine my observations to its effects in Western Africa, although if this were the proper time and occasion, I should not dread being able to demonstrate that wherever tolerated, its tendency must be evil in the worst degree. Polygamy is the fruitful source of jealousy and distrust, it contracts the parental and filial affections, it weakens and disjoints the ties of kindred, and but for the unlimited influence of the Maraboos and the fear of hell, if they do not profit of the license of their great Apostle, must totally unhinge the frame of all society. The father has many wives, the wives have many children, favoritism in its most odious form sets in, jealousy is soon aroused, and revenge unsheathes the sword which deals forth destruction. But it is not to the domestic circle, it is not to the family arrangements, it is not to the fearful mischiefs it leads to upon social intercourse that I look alone; but to its division of the soil and to its mutilation of the different states, than which nothing can prove more destructive to any country. The jealousies of the mothers, while exciting to domestic hatred, lead to external civil war, and states rise and set with a sort of harlequin operation, and when they are sought for vanish in the air, and “leave not a wreck behind.” The consequence of these wars is, that during the precarious conquests of these chiefs, their whole employment is plunder, and where that cannot be procured the forfeiture—is life. All order and morality is upset, all right is unknown, and the effect must be the degradation of society and the dismemberment of empire in that ill-fated portion of the world.