ON a business which has so long agitated the public mind as the Slave Trade, every thing that can be said, must in some manner be interesting. The atrocity of that unnatural and abominable custom could not in any instance have been more abundantly manifested, than in the late decision of a large majority in the House of Commons.
Perhaps the procrastination of the same important question, in a superior House, may be productive of greater good than the people of England are aware of. Perhaps it may upon the next discussion lead to an immediate and total abolition of a cruel and inhuman traffic. It cannot but be lamented that a personage of the first rank, who could have no other motive except that of love for uncontroulable tyranny, should become so strenuous an advocate for slavery. He has more than once expressed his sentiments in public, and on the present occasion seemed to have comported himself with an extraordinary degree of zeal, which whether it became the dignity of a P——— in such a cause, we shall not take on us to determine, but leave it to the world to judge of the propriety of such conduct.
Whatever the public opinion may be relative to the prosecution carried on against Captain Kimber, who has been (we suppose fairly) acquitted by an English Jury, it was evidently a necessary and a useful measure. It may afford a salutary lesson to those captains of slave ships, and masters of slaves who should hereafter attempt to commit such horrid outrages as he has been charged with: and it may, from the circumstances here related, (for such barbarities have doubtless been often practised) fill the minds of men universally with horror against the present system: until tyranny shall at length give way to public opinion, and liberty and happiness be restored to human beings.
THE
TRIAL
OF
CAPTAIN JOHN KIMBER,
For Murder, &c.
THIS trial came on at the Admiralty Sessions held at the Old Baily, on Thursday the 7th of June 1792; before Sir James Marriot, Judge Advocate of the Admiralty, Mr. Justice Ashurst, and Mr. Baron Hotham.
The prisoner was indicted for having feloniously, wickedly, and with malice aforethought, beaten and tortured a female slave, so as to cause her death: and he was again indicted for having caused the death of another female slave.
Mr. Broderic on the side of the prosecution, first opened the cause.
Sir William Scott next stated, that the prisoner, Captain Kimber, had commanded the ship Recovery, which traded in slaves from the Coast of Africa, to the West Indies: that in 1791, he arrived in the river of Calabar, whence he had, in some time after, departed with a cargo of slaves, among whom was that negro girl, for whose murder the prisoner now stood indicted. She had been for a considerable time afflicted with a loathsome distemper, and a lethargic complaint, which prevented her from eating, or mixing in any of those exercises which the other slaves on board were accustomed to practice. The prisoner had her punished for this supposed obstinacy; flogged her, and had her raised up by pullies from the deck, so that the tortures she endured, caused her to languish for a few days, until she died.