But it may be even affirmed, that the Africans, without the advantages to be derived from an intercourse with polished nations, have made greater advancements towards civilization than perhaps any other uncivilized people on earth. Nor is this the state of those nations only, which, from their having received some tincture of the Mussulman tenets, may be supposed to have owed their improvement to their Mahometan invaders, but in a considerable degree in those countries also where there are no traces whatever of any such connection.
Let us appeal to experience. In what state was Britain herself, when first visited by the Romans? More barbarous than many of the African kingdoms in the present day. Look to the aboriginal inhabitants of both the northern and southern continents of the new world, both when America was first discovered, and at the present day, with the exception, perhaps, of only the kingdom of Mexico. Look to New Holland, a tract of country as great as all Europe; look to Madagascar, to Borneo, to Sumatra, to the other islands in the Indian seas, or to those of the Pacific Ocean. Are not the Africans far more civilized than any of these? The fact is undeniable. Instead of a miserable race of wretched savages, thinly scattered over countries of immense extent; destitute almost of every art and manufacture (this is the condition of the greater part of the nations above specified), we find the Africans, in the interior, in the state of society which has been found, from history, next to precede the full enjoyment of all civil and social blessings; the inhabitants of cities and of the country mutually contributing towards each others’ support; political and civil rights recognized both by law and practice; natural advantages discerned, and turned to account; both agriculture, and, still more, manufactures, carried to a tolerable state of improvement; the population in some countries very considerable; and a strong sense of the value of knowledge, and an earnest desire of obtaining it. How great is the progress which the Africans have made compared with the scanty advantages they could derive from their barbarous Mahometan invaders!
But it has been the peculiar misery of Africa, that nations, already the most civilized, finding her in the state which has been described, instead of producing any such effects as might be hoped for from a commercial connection between a less and a more civilized people; instead of imparting to the former the superior knowledge and improvements of the latter; instead of awakening the dormant powers of the human mind, of calling forth new exertions of industry, and thus leading to a constant progression of new wants, desires, and tastes; to the acquisition of property, to the acquisition of capital, to the multiplication of comforts, and, by the more firm establishment of law and order, to that security and quiet, in which knowledge and the arts naturally grow up and flourish: instead of all these effects; it has been the sad fate of Africa, that when she did enter into an intercourse with polished nations, it was an intercourse of such a nature, as, instead of polishing and improving, has tended not merely to retard her natural progress, but to deprave and darken, and, if such a new term might be used where unhappily the novelty of the occurrence compels us to resort to one, to barbarize her wretched inhabitants.
New phenomenon: interior of Africa more civilized than the coast.
And now we are prepared both to admit and to understand a fact, which, though found to take place universally in Africa, is contrary to all former experience. In reviewing the moral history of man, and contemplating his progress from ignorance and barbarism, to the knowledge and comforts of a state of social refinement, it has been almost invariably found, that the sea coasts and the banks of navigable rivers, those districts which from their situation had most intercourse with more polished nations, have been the earliest civilized. In them, civil order, and social improvement, agriculture, industry, and at length the arts and sciences, have first flourished, and they have by degrees extended themselves into more inland regions. But the very reverse is the case in Africa. There, the countries on the coast are in a state of utter ignorance and barbarism, which also are always found to be the greatest where the intercourse with the Europeans has been the longest and most intimate;—while the interior countries, where not the face of a white man was ever seen, are far more advanced in the comforts and improvements of social life.
This is so extraordinary a phenomenon, and it points out so clearly the pernicious effects of the Slave Trade on the prosperity of Africa, that it deserves the most serious attention. However extraordinary the statement may appear, it is confirmed by the unvarying testimony of all African travellers. Such is the result of the experience of Mr. Parke, who penetrated deep into Africa in one part; such is that of Mr. Winterbottom, who travelled about 200 miles inland in another: and the same extraordinary fact has since received a most striking confirmation, in the accounts, before recited, of the Booshuana and Baroloo nations.
Surely more than enough has been stated, to shew how far the present state of Africa is from furnishing any just grounds for believing that the Africans are incapable of civilization. Our only cause for wonder is, not that on the coast, where all is anarchy and insecurity, the inhabitants should have gradually declined from the state of civilization to which they had attained, and should have at length sunk into a state of profound ignorance and barbarism; for they have long been in circumstances which have been ever found utterly incompatible with the rise and progress of civilization and knowledge; the more just subject of astonishment is, that the kingdoms in the interior should still be found in a condition of so much civil order and improvement, in spite of the pernicious effects of the Slave Trade on their moral and social state. But, through the gracious ordination of Heaven, the political, like the natural body, can exist under severe and harassing disorders. They may materially injure its health and comfort, and yet not utterly destroy it. Thus the evils which the interior countries suffer from the Slave Trade, are great and many; but their effects are not, as they commonly are on the coast, such as to break up the very foundations of society, and destroy the cohesion of its elementary parts. In the interior, the Slave Trade exercises powers of destruction which justly entitle it to the character of one of the greatest scourges of the human race. But it is on the coast that it reaches its full dimensions, and attains to the highest point of its detestable pre-eminence.
But if the foregoing remarks prove plainly that our Slave dealers have no just grounds for arguing, from the present uncivilized state of the coast, that it is incapable of civilization; surely we cannot but be astonished at the finished assurance, as well as the consummate injustice and cruelty, with which they would charge on the natural constitution and character of the natives of Africa, that very barbarism of which they themselves are the authors; and not only so, but which, after having produced it, they urge on us as a plea for continuing that wretched land under the same dreadful interdict, not only from all the comforts of the civilized state, but from all the charities of life; from all virtue and all happiness; sealing her up for ever in bondage, ignorance, and blood.
You have been detained, I fear, far too long before this melancholy picture; and yet I am almost ashamed of apologizing for prolixity, when I consider what “a world of woes” it is which I have been exhibiting to your view.
Slave Traders’ argument that the Negroes were at home in a worse state of slavery.