390 Ancient and Modern Systems of * Slavery. [APRIL, 



stating that " they" (the slaves) " usually ploughed the land, carried 

 earth, and performed the other labours of the field, in chains." 



At night they were shut up in prisons many of them built under 

 ground.* In old age, they were, even by the Roman Cato, says Arch- 

 bishop Potter,t " turned out to starve, or allowed to die of hunger. 

 f A master of a family should sell his old oxen, all his sheep that are 

 not hardy : he should sell his old waggons, and his old instruments of 

 husbandry ; he should sell such of his slaves as are old and infirm, 

 and every thing else that is old or useless/ " Up to the time of the 

 Emperor Claudius, " the custom," says Rees, " of exposing old, use- 

 less, or sick slaves, in an island of the Tiber, there to starve, seems to 

 have been pretty common in Rome." Masters were restrained from 

 liberating more than a very small number of their slaves ; and even 

 after manumission the most unjust severity was exercised towards 

 them such was the system which has, most impudently, been held 

 forth by the " philanthropists" as having been superior to that now 

 prevalent in the British West Indies ! 



Every additional account of the present state of society in the in- 

 terior of Africa confirms the melancholy fact, that throughout the whole 

 of that vast continent a state of unmitigated slavery has from the earliest 

 ages been universal : that it existed prior to the visits of Euro- 

 pean slave traders ; that it now exists, and will undoubtedly continue, 

 although not a single native should in future be carried off from the 

 coast. 



We are very far, however, from asserting that the abolition of the 

 slave trade would be an evil ; on the contrary, we maintain that until 

 it is entirely put down, the door will remain shut against the intro- 

 duction of improvement, especially among the brutal and ferocious 

 tribes on the coast. 



We have already made an attempt to expose the system of humbug 

 which has for the last forty or fifty years been practised upon the people 

 of this country under pretence of civilizing Africa.^ We do not 

 believe that that measure can be in the slightest degree accomplished 

 by the Sierra Leone system, under all the disadvantages to which it is 

 incident, or by any similar measure; although by maintaining com- 

 mercial settlements and keeping up a friendly and protective inter- 

 course with those tribes who seem most inclined to cultivate the arts of 

 peace, and by making it their direct interest to maintain good govern- 

 ment and to cultivate humanity, we may by degrees pave the way for 

 the introduction of more efficient means of improvement. 



Without going fully into the subject at present, however, we shall en- 

 deavour to show from the statements of the two latest travellers in Africa, 

 whose works are now before the public, the actual state of society in 

 the interior of that wretched country. We are well aware that a veil. 

 has been thrown over the observations of some former travellers in 

 regard to the actual state of the Africans, to meet the taste of the 

 public in regard to the Slave Trade, but as we happen to know some- 

 thing of the manner in which books of travels are in general compiled, 

 we have little difficulty in separating the actual observations of the 

 traveller from those sentiments which emanate from the compiler. 



We can scarcely, however, say, that this observation applies to this 



* Rees' Cycl. -f Antiquities, b. i. c. ID*. 



% Monthly Magazine for March last. 



