APPENDIX. No. VI. 
cxxix 
commerce with the western coast of Africa, must be considered as highljr 
interesting and important; both as shewing how extremely small that com- 
merce was prior to the Abolition of the slave trade, and how much it has 
increased during the very few years which have since elapsed. This increase 
has certainly been much more considerable than there was any good reason 
for expecting, under the actual circumstances of the case. 
If we were told of a country, whose staple article of export trade consisted 
of its own inhabitants, its men, women and children, who were procured (as 
must necessarily happen in the case of large and continued exports) by 
treachery and violence — where the whole population was either living in 
continual apprehension of captivity and eternal banishment from their native 
soil, or employed contriving the means of inflicting those evils upon others 
— we should at once conclude that the very insecurity of person and property^ 
which such a state of society implied, would of itself extinguish all the 
motives to regular industry, and limit the culture of the soil very nearly to what 
was required for supplying the immediate wants of nature. 
Such in fact were the circumstances of Africa prior to the year 1808; at 
which time the slave trade carried on by Great Britain, and the United States 
of North America having been abolished by those respective governments, 
and the slave trade of France and Holland being virtually abohshed by the 
war, a considerable mitigation of the prevailing evils took place. A farther 
improvement was effected about three years afterwards, by means of the article 
in the treaty of amity with Portugal, which bound Portuguese subjects to con- 
fine their trading in slaves to places in Africa actually under the possession, 
of that Government. By this arrangement the whole coast of Africa from 
Cape Blanco to the eastern extremity of the Gold Coast (with the exception of 
the Portuguese settlement of Bissao) were in a considerable degree liberated 
from the operation of the slave trade. 
The Spaniards indeed claimed a right of trading within those limits; but 
it was a right which, in its exercise, did not prove so prejudicial as might have 
been expected. The slave trade carried on under the Spanish flag, has been 
found in most instances not to be a bond fide Spanish trade, but a British or 
American slave trade in disguise; and latterly the Portuguese, being excluded 
by treaty from the whole of the windward coast except Bissao, have begun to 
avail themselves of the same disguise. Many slave vessels under these cir- 
cumstances, bearing the Spanish flag, have been captured by the British cruiz- 
€rs : and the condemnations which have taken place, have tended greatly 
VOL. II. S 
