392 JAMAICA. 



ciience, may be judged from the well- attefted fad, that if the {laves 

 which the Africans bring to market are fo old or blemiflied, that 

 they cannot get what they think a fufRcient price for them, they 

 will cut their throats before the faces of the Europeans [j]. To abolifh 

 this trade, is therefore no other than to refign them up to thofe dia- 

 bolical butcheries, cruelty, and carnage, which ravaged their pro- 

 vinces before the European commerce with them began. 



It appears from the fulled evidence, that the provinces bordering 

 upon the coafl: do not fend any of their own natives into banhh- 

 ment, unlcfs for atrocious crimes; the major part are brought from 

 the interior parts, where thefe Haves are an eftablifhed article of 

 traffic; fome few captives of war, the reft convifts, or criminal per- 

 sons, born in a ftate of pure ilavery ; and over whom their owners 

 cxercife, agreeably to their ufage and conftitutions, the moft abfolute 

 •will and power. 



We are informed, that the Black merchants travel many hundred 

 inlles, and colled them from theutmoft: extremities of Afric; great 

 numbers, fold from Angola, having been brought from the interior 

 parts of ^Ethiopia, on the borders of the Indian ocean; and at Sabi, 

 and in other provinces, inland, regular markets are held, where are 

 to be fold men, women, children, hogs, flieep, goats, &c. incom- 

 inon. We find therefore, that thefe fupplies are drawn, by a variety 

 of channels, from every part of this extenfive continent ; every pro- 

 vince contributing a few; fo that by the time thefe feveral quotas are 

 affembled at the coaft, or grand fliipping-place, they may well 

 amount to a very confiderable multitude. 



If a Negroe, fo purchafed, fhould, upon being tranlplanted into a 

 country where freedom is truly underllood, afpire to get free from 

 that bondage in which he has always lived, or to which the judge- 

 ment of his fociety has decreed him ; I acknowledge there are no 

 means of preventing his attempts, but by an exertion of force. Few 

 men (except thofe Africans who live in their own country in a ftate 

 of fervility) are without the defire of enlargement. Thefe Africans 

 know not what freedom is, until they enter our colonies; and there- 

 fore can have no paflion for a ftate, whofe qualities they are igno- 

 rant of. In regard to other countries, and other men, the laws of 



[s] Treatife on the Trade from Great Bmain to Africa, 1773. 



different 



