Take then the Negroes of St. Domingo, justly jealous of the Europeans, and resolved carefully to watch over and defend those newly-acquired liberties which they have so dearly purchased. They hear of cargoes of their wretched countrymen continually torn from their native land, and doomed for life to a state of vassalage. They see that, all around them, their African countrymen are still detained in that same state of bitter bondage from which they have themselves so lately emerged. They know that the Colonists in all the islands regard them with mixed emotions of hatred and fear, and would rejoice in being able again to rivet on their chains. Do they not see, in the present degraded state of their brethren, and remember in their own, that there is a grand fundamental ground of distinction between Blacks and Whites, a radical separation and even opposition of interests; a real, enduring principle of hostility?
May they not reasonably be supposed to think that they owe it alike to their honour and their security to vindicate the rights of their sable countrymen? May they not apprehend, that if they do not, while they can, assist their brethren in the neighbouring colonies to assert their freedom, and drive out their taskmasters, the white inhabitants of the other islands will not only preserve their empire over the Blacks already subject to them, but be continually plotting for the destruction of freedom in St. Domingo? May they not justly fear lest the European Powers, when their present differences shall be made up, should hereafter combine their efforts to restore, even in St. Domingo itself, the yoke of slavery?
Such, it is not unnatural to suppose, will be the reasonings and sensations of the St. Domingo Negroes. But experience has in vain afforded us proofs of the watchfulness, address, and versatility of our indefatigable enemy, if we do not suppose it possible that Bonaparte, by his agents, will reinforce those natural surmises; that by suggesting, through his emissaries, to the Negroes of St. Domingo, the dangers to which they are exposed, and the means of averting them, he will endeavour to stimulate them to invade Jamaica, and to stir up in all our islands insurrection and revolt. Those whom he has in vain attempted to make the victims of his rapacity, he will thus render the instruments of his revenge.
Let any one read the “Crisis of our Sugar Colonies” with seriousness, and he will acknowledge the amount, the variety, the probability, of the dangers to which our West Indian settlements are exposed. Their reality as well as their magnitude must equally be confessed by every man whose judgment is not totally obscured by interest, or whose discernment is not altogether blinded by familiarity with the objects which he views.
Our population drained.
The next of the important topics to which I lately alluded is one on which, from prudential motives, I will press lightly; but which I must commend to the most serious attention of my readers, not merely from considerations of humanity, but even of self-interest. The West Indies have long been regarded as the grave of our soldiers and seamen, but never surely with so much reason as of late years. For a new disease has broken out, so terribly wasteful in its effects, and so little subject hitherto to the controul of medicine, as to furnish too just cause for fearing lest there should be such a constant drain of the population of the mother country, as from the numbers consumed on the one hand, perhaps even still more on the other, from the dangerous effects on our naval and military service (I trust I shall be understood, though, from motives of caution, I rather hint than express my meaning) to render the protection of our transatlantic colonies incompatible with our internal security. This is a topic on which I will not press; but in proportion as I abstain from the alarming discussion, lest I should in any degree aggravate one of the evils which I apprehend, let it be deeply and seriously weighed by every considerate mind. Even independently of interest, shall not the voice of humanity be heard? Is it nothing to send the brave defenders of our country, and the flower of our youth, to a pestilential climate, where they fall not in the field of battle, not contending with the enemies of their country, but where they perish unknown, and therefore ingloriously, often even falling the victims of their own fears, from beholding such multitudes around them continually swept away.[[53]]
But that which I must press upon you is, that all these sufferers, or at least an immense majority of them, are the victims of the Slave Trade. For it is this pernicious traffic, which by the double operation of continually increasing the disproportion between the Blacks and Whites on the one hand, and of obstructing on the other those salutary reforms which would change by degrees this depraved, degraded mass into a happy peasantry; makes you shrink back with terror from defending the islands by their own internal resources, though we cannot but acknowledge that they would hereby be rendered utterly invincible by any European force which the great nation, or any others of our enemies, might bring against them.[[54]] And here a fresh prospect of misery opens to our view: here come in a new set of sufferers from the Slave Trade, not the less to be attended to, because, as yet at least, they do not themselves trace the bitter stream from which their cup is filled, to its original source; the numerous train of widows and orphans and relatives, whose nearest connections have fallen the victims of the diseases of the western world. I am persuaded, that if the full effect of the Slave Trade in this relation were generally known, the general feelings of the nation, more powerfully, alas! excited for our own subjects than for the unhappy Africans, would have produced throughout the British Isles one universal cry of indignation against this arch enemy of the happiness of mankind. Here is another of those instances, several of which in the course of this investigation we have had occasion to remark, wherein, through the righteous retribution of Heaven, wickedness and cruelty are not allowed, even in this world, to go unpunished; by which the irreligious and unfeeling are taught to respect the happiness of others, if from no higher motive, yet from regard to the preservation of their own.
Summary view of the miseries produced by the Slave Trade.
And now surely you must be prepared to admit without hesitation, and in its full extent, the declaration made by Mr. Pitt in the House of Commons, that the Slave Trade was the greatest practical evil that ever had afflicted the human race. Such indeed it would be found, had we but leisure to take the real weight of all the various evils which it includes; and surely it might well become us to enter into this examination. But it would almost exceed the powers of calculation, after having traced the Slave Trade into all its various forms of suffering, to estimate the amount of them all.
Let us, however, spend a few moments in adding up the great totals of which it consists, that we may be the less likely to deceive ourselves, as in such cases men are apt to do, by underrating the evils of which we are the cause, and consequently the amount of guilt with which we are chargeable.