It is rather remarkable, that the first forerunners and coadjutors should have been men in power.
So early as in the year 1503, a few slaves had been sent from the Portuguese settlements in Africa into the Spanish colonies in America. In 1511, Ferdinand the Fifth, king of Spain, permitted them to be carried in great numbers. Ferdinand, however, must have been ignorant in these early times of the piratical manner in which the Portuguese had procured them. He could have known nothing of their treatment when in bondage, nor could he have viewed the few uncertain adventurous transportations of them into his dominions in the western world, in the light of a regular trade. After his death, however; a proposal was made by Bartholomew de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, to Cardinal Ximenes, who held the reigns of the government of Spain till Charles the Fifth came to the throne, for the establishment of a regular system of commerce in the persons of the native Africans. The object of Bartholomew de las Casas was undoubtedly to save the American Indians, whose cruel treatment and almost extirpation he had witnessed during his residence among them, and in whose behalf he had undertaken a voyage to the court of Spain. It is difficult to reconcile this proposal with the humane and charitable spirit of the bishop of Chiapa. But it is probable he believed that a code of laws would soon be established in favour both of Africans and of the natives in the Spanish settlements, and that he flattered himself that, being about to return and to live in the country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it. The cardinal, however, with a foresight, a benevolence, and a justice which will always do honour to his memory, refused the proposal, not only judging it to be unlawful to consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be very inconsistent to deliver the inhabitants of one country from a state of misery by consigning to it those of another. Ximenes, therefore, may be considered as one of the first great friends of the Africans after the partial beginning of the trade.
This answer of the cardinal, as it showed his virtue as an individual, so was it peculiarly honourable to him as a public man, and ought to operate as a lesson to other statesmen, how they admit any thing new among political regulations and establishments, which is connected in the smallest degree with injustice; for evil, when once sanctioned by governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and may, unless seasonably checked, become so ramified as to effect the reputation of a country, and to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the political concerns of the state. In no instance has this been verified more than in the case of the Slave Trade. Never was our national character more tarnished, and our prosperity more clouded by guilt. Never was there a monster more difficult to subdue. Even they, who heard as it were the shrieks of oppression, and wished to assist the sufferers, were fearful of joining in their behalf. While they acknowledged the necessity of removing one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and were, therefore, only able to relieve their feelings by, lamenting, in the bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.
After the death of Cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who had come into power, encouraged the Slave Trade. In 1517, he granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long enough to repent of what he had thus inconsiderately done; for in the year 1542, he made a code of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign dominions, and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order that all slaves in his American islands should he made free. This order was executed by Pedro de la Gasca. Manumission took place as well in Hispaniola as on the Continent; but on the return of Gasca to Spain, and the retirement of Charles into a monastery, slavery was revived.
It is impossible to pass over this instance of the abolition of slavery by Charles, in all his foreign dominions, without some comments. It shows him, first, to have been a friend both to the Indians and the Africans, as a part of the human race; it shows he was ignorant of what he was doing when he gave his sanction to this cruel trade; it shows when legislators give one set of men undue power over another, how quickly they abuse it, or he never would have found himself obliged, in the short space of twenty-five years, to undo that which he had countenanced as a great state measure; and while it confirms the former lesson to statesmen of watching the beginnings or principles of things in their political movements, it should teach them never to persist in the support of evils, through the false shame of being obliged to confess that they had once given them their sanction, nor to delay the cure of them because, politically speaking, neither this nor that is the proper season; but to do them away instantly, as there can only be one fit or proper time in the eye of religion, namely, on the conviction of their existence.
From the opinions of Cardinal Ximenes and of the emperor Charles the Fifth, I hasten to that which was expressed much about the same time, in a public capacity, by Pope Leo the Tenth. The Dominicans in Spanish America, witnessing the cruel treatment which the slaves underwent there, considered slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the gospel, and recommended the abolition of it. The Franciscans did not favour the former in this their scheme of benevolence; and the consequence was, that a controversy on this subject sprung up between them, which was carried to this pope for his decision. Leo exerted himself, much to his honour, in behalf of the poor sufferers, and declared "That not only the Christian religion, but that Nature herself cried out against a state of slavery." This answer was certainly worthy of one who was deemed the head of the Christian Church. It must, however, be confessed that it would have been strange if Leo, in his situation as pontiff, had made a different reply. He could never have denied that God was no respecter of persons. He must have acknowledged that men were bound to love each other as brethren; and, if he admitted the doctrine that all men were accountable for their actions hereafter, he could never have prevented the deduction that it was necessary they should be free. Nor could he, as a man of high attainments, living early in the sixteenth century, have been ignorant of what had taken place in the twelfth; or that, by the latter end of this latter century, christianity had obtained the undisputed honour of having extirpated slavery from the western part of the European world.
From Spain and Italy I come to England. The first importation of slaves from Africa, by our countrymen, was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562. This great princess seems on the very commencement of the trade to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a religious scruple concerning it; and, indeed, to have revolted at the very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most unjustifiable means might be made use of to procure the persons of the natives of Africa. And in what light she would have viewed any acts of this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact,—that when Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins returned from his first voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent for him, and, as we learn from Hill's Naval History expressed her concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that "it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers." Captain Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect, but he did not keep his word; for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the inhabitants and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words:—"Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will some time be the destruction of all who allow or encourage it." That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described to have uttered, can be only attributed to the pains taken by those concerned in it to keep her ignorant of the truth.
From England I now pass over to France. Labat, a Roman missionary, in his account of the isles of America, mentions that Louis the Thirteenth was very uneasy when he was about to issue the edict by which all Africans coming into his colonies were to be made slaves, and that this uneasiness continued till he was assured that the introduction of them in this capacity into his foreign dominions was the readiest way of converting them to the principles of the Christian religion.
These, then, were the first forerunners in the great cause of the abolition of the Slave Trade: nor have their services towards it been of small moment; for, in the first place, they have enabled those who came after them, and who took an active interest in the same cause, to state the great authority of their opinions and of their example. They have enabled them, again, to detail the history connected with these, in consequence of which circumstances have been laid open which it is of great importance to know; for have they not enabled them to state that the African Slave Trade never would have been permitted to exist but for the ignorance of those in authority concerning it—that at its commencement there was a revolting of nature against it—a suspicion, a caution, a fear, both as to its unlawfulness and its effects? Have they not enabled them to state that falsehoods were advanced, and these concealed under the mask of religion, to deceive those who had the power to suppress it? Have they not enabled them to state that this trade began in piracy, and that it was continued upon the principles of force? And, finally, have not they who have been enabled to make these statements, knowing all the circumstances connected with them, found their own zeal increased, and their own courage and perseverance strengthened; and have they not, by the communication of them to others, produced many friends and even labourers in the cause?