232 



SLAVERY. 



verselle, after an examination of all the Spanish and j 

 Portuguese historians of that period. This charge, 

 he says, rests solely on the authority of Herrera, 

 an elegant but inaccurate author. The Spanish 

 government, the French under Louis XIII., and 

 the English under queen Elizabeth, formally per- 

 mitted this traffic, because the negroes were repre- 

 sented as delivered by it from misery or death. 

 Yet Elizabeth declared herself against the violences 

 used. In Spain, the slave-trade >vas first regularly 

 established in 1517. Charles V. granted to Leb- 

 resa, his favourite, the exclusive privilege of import- 

 ing annually 4000 slaves, which the latter sold to 

 the Genoese. These received the black slaves from 

 the Portuguese, in whose hands, properly speaking, 

 the traffic was. Slaves soon came to be introduced 

 much more extensively into the plantation colonies 

 than into the mining colonies. And thus the sla- 

 very of the negroes became, unhappily, a part of a 

 political system. It also became a great source of 

 profit to the petty African despots, and gave rise to 

 interminable wars and outrages, which struck at the 

 root of all social ties. The powerful became chief- 

 ly occupied with forcing their brethren to the mar- 

 ket of Christian Europeans, to barter them for rum 

 and toys. When therefore, in consequence of the 

 French revolution, the demand for this human mer- 

 chandise had lessened, the king of Dahomy, on the 

 Slave Coast, sent, in 1786, an embassy, consisting 

 of his brother and son, to Lisbon, for the purpose 

 of reviving this traffic, and concluding a treaty with 

 Portugal against the other European powers. The 

 most important markets for slaves in Africa were 

 Bonny and Calabar, on the coast of Guinea; and 

 they still remain among the principal. Here the 

 slaves who came from the interior were and are 

 exchanged for rum, brandy, toys, iron, salt, &c. ; 

 and the number of these beings who have been thus 

 torn from their country during the last three cen- 

 turies, is calculated to amount to above forty mil- 

 lions. It is estimated that at least from fifteen to 

 twenty per cent, die on the passage. The suffer- 

 ings of the slaves during the passage are horrible; 

 and the only restraint, generally speaking, on the 

 cruelty of the traders, is such as arises from motives 

 of interest; so that, when it interferes with hu- 

 manity (for instance, if the slave labours under an 

 infectious disease), the latter is entirely overlooked, 

 and murder is not unfrequently committed. Since 

 the prohibition of the slave-trade by so many na- 

 tions, and the great efforts which have been made 

 for the capture of the slave-ships, though the extent 

 of the trade may be diminished, yet the cruelty with 

 which it is carried on is often increased, because the 

 slave-trader, being obliged to guard against capture 

 by the men-of-war who are watching his move- 

 ments, and, altogether, to carry on his traffic by 

 stealth, subjects the slaves to many restraints for 

 the purposes of concealment, which he did not find 

 necessary while the slave-trade was legal. Not- 

 withstanding all that has been done for its abolition, 

 a contraband trade in slaves is still carried on to a 

 frightful extent, and they are still imported into 

 Cuba and many other West India islands, frequent- 

 ly, as is asserted, by the connivance of the public 

 authorities. As a specimen of the cruelties com- 

 mitted in this nefarious trade, we will give the ac- 

 count of a recent traveller, whose statements are 

 corroborated .by many other authorities.* 



* Mr R. Walsh, in his Notices of Brazil in 1823 and 1829 

 (London, 1830), says, in describing a slave-ship, examined by 

 the British man-of-war, in which he returned from Brazil, in 



The first persons who liberated their slaves, and 

 laboured to effect the abolition of the slave-trade, 

 were some Quakers in England and North America, 

 particularly since 1727. In 1751, the Quakers en- 

 tirely abolished it among themselves. Granville 

 Sharp, in 1772, effected the acknowledgment, by 



May, 1829, " She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males 

 and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen 

 days during which she nad thrown overboard fifty-five. The 

 slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways, between 

 decks. The space was so low, that they sat between cadi 

 other's legs, and stowed so close together, that there was no 

 possibility of their lying down, or at all changing their position, 

 by night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on ac- 

 count of, different individuals, they were all branded, like 

 sheep with the owners' marks, of different forms. These 

 were impressed under their breasts, or on their arms, and, n 

 the mate informed me, with perfect indifference, " gueitnado 

 peloferro quento burnt with red-hot iron." Over the hatch/ 

 way stood a ferocious looking fellow, with a scourge of many 

 twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave-driver of t' 

 ship ; and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, 

 shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. 

 soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, 

 their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They per- 

 ceived something of sympathy and kindness in our looks, which 

 they had not been accustomed to, and feeling, instinctively, 

 that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap 

 their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese 

 words, and cried out, " Viva. I eira!" The women were parti- 

 cularly excited. They all held up their arms ; and when we 

 bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain 

 their delight ; they endeavoured to scramble upon their knees, 

 stretching up to kiss our hands ; and we understood that they 

 knew we were come to liberate them. Some, however, hung 

 down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection ; some were 

 greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dy- 

 ing. But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, w;is, 

 how it was possible for such a number of human beings to 

 exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could 

 cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, 

 except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut 

 out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed 

 to the open sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89". 

 The space between decks was divided into two compart- 

 ments, three feet three inches high ; the size of one was six- 

 teen feet by eighteen, and of the other forty by twenty-one : 

 into the first were crammed the women and girls; into the 

 second, the men and boys: 226 fellow creatures were thus 

 thrust into one space 288 feet square, and 336 into another space 

 800 feet square, giving to the whole an average of twenty-three 

 inches, and to each of the women not more than thirteen inches, 

 though many of them were pregnant. We also found mana- 

 cles and fetters of different kinds ; but it appears that they had 

 all been taken off before we boarded. The heat of these hor- 

 rid places was so great, and the odour so offensive, that it was 

 quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. 

 They were measured, as above, when the slaves had left tham. 

 The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be 

 admitted on deck, to get air and water. This was opposed by 

 the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling- that they deserved 

 it, declared they would murder them all. The officers, how- 

 ever, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together. 

 It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption 507 

 fellow creatures, of all ages and sexes, some children some 

 adults, some old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, 

 scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air 

 and water. They came swarming up, like bees from the aper- 

 ture of a hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, 

 from stem to stern ; so that it was impossible to imagine where 

 they could all have come from, or how they could all have been 

 stowed away. :n looking into the place where they had been 

 crammed, there were found some clifldren next the sides of the 

 ship, in the places most remote for light or air , they were lying 

 nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. 'The 

 little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death ; and when 

 they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. 

 After enjoying, for a short time, the unusual luxury of air 

 some water was brought ; it was then that the extent of their 

 sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed 

 like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows, 

 could restrain them ; they shrieked and struggled, and fought 

 with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they 

 grew rabid at the sight of it. There is nothing which slaves, in 

 the mid-passage, suffer from so much as want of water. It is 

 sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water as bal- 

 last, and when the slaves are received on board, to start the 

 casks and refill them with fresh. On one occasion, a ship from 

 Bahia neglected to change the contents of the casks, and on the 

 mid-passage found, to their horror, that they were filled with 

 nothing but salt water. All the slaves on board perished ! We 

 could judge of the extent of their sufferings from the afflicting 

 sight we now saw. When the poor creatures were order 

 down again, several of them came, and pressed their he- 

 against our knees, with looks of the greatest anguish, at 

 prospect of returning to the horrid place of suffering below." 



The English ship, nowever, was obliged, though with great 

 reluctance, to release the slaver, as it could not be proved 

 after a strict, examination, that he had exceeded the privilege, 

 allowed to Brazilian ships, of procuring slaves south of the line. 



