236 SOCIAL CONDITION OF AFRICA. 



pass along their borders. Princes, kings, and the mogt 

 distinguished warriors consider it a glory to place them- 

 selves at the head of an expedition undertaken solely for 

 the purposes of plunder. 



Slavery seems also to belong to the barbarian state. Man 

 has emerged from the limited wants of savage life, and sees 

 productions of art, which he eagerly covets, without having 

 acquired those habits of steady industry by which he might 

 earn them for himself. His remedy is to compel those whom 

 his superior strength, or any other advantage, enables him 

 to bring under subjection, to labour in supplying his wants. 

 Often the blind and spontaneous veneration of those tribes 

 for their chiefs causes them to sink into voluntary slavery ; 

 many again are made captive in war ; and generally a great 

 part of the population of every barbarous society is placed 

 in a state of bondage. 



From the two evUs above described arises a third, stift 

 darker, — the stealing of human beings in order to make 

 them slaves. This is perpetrated widely throughout Africa, 

 and attended with every circumstance of crime and horror. 

 It is an enormity also in which the greatest sovereigns do not 

 scruple to participate. Their troops surround a town in the 

 dead of night, watching till the first dawn, when the gates 

 are opened ; — they then rush in, set fire to it, and while the 

 victims, with shrieks and cries, are seeking to escape, bind 

 and carry them off into slavery. It must be confessed, at 

 the same time, that the unrelenting and atrocious spirit of 

 this warfare has been in a great measure produced by fo- 

 reign connexion, either with the European powers, or with 

 Northern Africa, Turkey, and other Mohammedan states. 



Notwithstanding so many evils, however, we may again 

 repeat, that an unvaried cloud of moral darkness does not 

 hang over Africa. The negro character appears to be dis- 

 tinguished by some features unusually amiable, by a pecu- 

 liar warmth of the social affections, and by a close adhe- 

 rence to kindred ties. If some travellers have been ill- 

 treated and plundered, others have been relieved with the 

 most signal and generous hospitality. The negro, unless 

 when under the influence of some violent excitement, is, on 

 the whole, more mild, hospitable, and liberal than the 

 Moor ; it is by the latter race that the atrocities against Eu- 

 ropean travellers have been chiefly perpetrated. 



In the political arrangements of the African states there 



