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 black and white 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 you sometimes tell us,
Is there one, who rules on high;
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Fetters, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means, which 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,
Fixed their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer—No.
By our blood in Afric wasted,
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries, which we tasted
Crossing, in your barks, the main;
By our sufferings, since you brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All-sustained by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart:
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason you 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.
This little piece Cowper presented in manuscript to some of his friends in London; and these, conceiving it to contain a powerful appeal in behalf of the injured Africans, joined in printing it. Having ordered it on the finest hot-pressed paper, and folded it up in a small and neat form, they gave it the printed title of A Subject for Conversation at the Tea-table. After this, they sent many thousand copies of it in franks into the country. From one it spread to another, till it travelled almost over the whole island. Falling at length into the hands of the musician, it was set to music; and it then found its way into the streets, both of the metropolis and of the country, where it was sung as a ballad; and where it gave a plain account of the subject, with an appropriate feeling, to those who heard it.
Nor was the philanthropy of the late Mr. Wedgewood less instrumental in turning the popular feeling in our favour. He made his own manufactory contribute to this end. He took the seal of the committee, as exhibited in [Chap. XX.], for his model; and he produced a beautiful cameo, of a less size, of which the ground was a most delicate white, but the Negro, who was seen imploring compassion in the middle of it, was in his own native colour. Mr. Wedgewood made a liberal donation of these, when finished, among his friends. I received from him no less than five hundred of them myself. They, to whom they were sent, did not lay them up in their cabinets, but gave them away likewise. They were soon, like The Negro's Complaint, in different parts of the kingdom. Some had them inlaid in gold on the lid of their snuff-boxes. Of the ladies, several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length the taste for wearing them became general; and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity, and freedom.
I shall now only state that the committee took as members within its own body, in the period of time which is included in this chapter, the Reverend Mr. Ormerod, chaplain to the Bishop of London, and Captain James Bowen, of the royal navy; that they elected the Honourable Nathaniel Curzon (afterwards Lord Scarsdale), Dr. Frossard, of Lyons, and Benjamin Garlike, Esq., then secretary to the English embassy at the Hague, honorary and corresponding members; and that they concluded their annual labours with a suitable report, in which they noticed the extraordinary efforts of our opponents to injure our cause in the following manner:—"In the progress of this business, a powerful combination of interest has been excited against us. The African trader, the planter, and the West India merchant, have united their forces to defend the fortress, in which their supposed treasures lie. Vague calculations and false alarms have been thrown out to the public, in order to show that the constitution, and even the existence, of this free and opulent nation depend on its depriving the inhabitants of a foreign country of those rights and of that liberty which we ourselves so highly and so justly prize. Surely, in the nature of things, and in the order of Providence, it cannot be so. England existed as a great nation long before the African commerce was known amongst us, and it is not to acts of injustice and violence that she owes her present rank in the scale of nations."