264 THE BRITISH COLONIES. 



ferocious animals domesticated by means of feeding them with an article 

 which our baneful fiscal restrictions and erroneous commercial policy has 

 checked the use of in England, where millions pine, sicken, and perish for 

 want of nutriment." 



The origin of that greatest of all the abominations which men or 

 angels ever witnessed, we mean West India slavery, is thus given : 



" When the Spaniards found how rapidly the aboriginal or Indian 

 population of the West India isles perished under the system of forced 

 labour, and beneath the tyranny of their rule, the expedient of introducing 

 negro slaves from Africa was resorted to, and that infernal traffic in 

 human blood and agony doubly curst to the enslaver and enslaved 

 sprang into deadly and ferocious activity. The example of the Spaniards 

 was soon followed by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English ; com- 

 panies for the horrid traffic were formed : monopolies granted, and kings, 

 princes, and nobles enriched their coffers with the price of human blood. 



" About thirty millions of our fellow creatures have been dragged from 

 their native homes, shipped like cattle in chains to a distant land, worked 

 like the beast of the field, shot like dogs if they murmured forth a claim in 

 behalf of humanity ; and finally they have (with few exceptions) pined and 

 perished under the cruelties, avarice, and brutality, of a handful of Euro- 

 peans, for of the thirty millions exported from Africa to the West Indies 

 since the commencement of the sixteenth century, not half a million of 

 the original slaves, or of their unmixed descendants, are now in ex- 

 istence 1" 



We never could bring ourselves to think of this accursed system 

 without feeling the blood boiling in our veins, and without blushing 

 at the humiliating fact that men who were the advocates and abettors 

 of this system could not, only by the ordinary ties of humanity, 

 claim a brotherhood with us, but that, as if desirous of trying how 

 they could offer the greatest outrage to Christianity, professed to be 

 its disciples while defending and approving that system in its most 

 atrocious and iniquitous forms. But thank heaven and the voice of 

 a British and a Christian public, that system no longer exists to dis* 

 grace the name and the land of Englishmen. Mr. Martin forcibly 

 describes its withering and desolating effects, and exults at its 

 overthrow : 



" In the West India chronicles for three hundred years I find nothing 

 but wars, usurpations, crimes, misery and vice : no green spot in the desert 

 of human wretchedness on which the mind of a philanthropist would love 

 to dwell ; all all is one revolting scene of infamy, bloodshed, and un- 

 mitigated woe. Slavery (both Indian and Negro,) that blighting Upas, has 

 been the curse of the West Indies ; it has accompanied the white colonist, 

 whether Spaniard, Frenchman, or Briton, in his progress, tainting, like a 

 plague, every incipient association, and blasting the efforts of man, how- 

 ever originally well disposed by its demon-like influence over the natural 

 virtues with which his Creator had endowed him leaving all dark, and 

 cold, and desolate within. 



" But now a glorious and happier era burst upon the Western World, 

 it diffuses the light of a new existence over the soul, Liberty is the spirit it 

 has awakened ; already her voice resounds along the beautiful hills and 

 through the fertile vallies of the West, and is swept over the ocean to the 

 uttermost bounds of the earth. Long may England wear the crown of 

 glory that encircles her with a halo far brighter than that of all her con- 

 quests and battles ; millions of the human race will bless her name for 



