TRADE. 
339 
interior, as inauspicious to our intercourse and progress, as the even 
partial continuance of such a trade is to legitimate commerce and 
civihzation. One thousand slaves left Ashantee for two Spanish 
schooners or Americans under that flag, to our knowledge, during 
our residence there, doubtless the whole number was much greater ; 
since our return it must have been very considerable, for the slave 
trade was never more brisk than it is at this moment under the 
cloak of the Spanish flag, and great risk has been incurred, in con- 
sequence, of offending our new friend and formidable neighbour 
the King of Ashantee, from the firm resistance of his strong intrea- 
ties to the Governor in Chief, to allow the return of a powerful 
mulatto slave trader to Cape Coast town, whence he had been 
expelled under the present government, as the most daring pro- 
moter of that commerce. It is a great pity, in the infancy of our 
intercourse with this great interior power, that there should have 
been occasion either for the request or refusal; which there would 
not have been had the slave trade been abolished, instead of 
crippled, at the expense, probably, of our own interests and views 
in the interior, and, which is worse, of the happiness and improve- 
ment of the natives. For it is certainly our duty, because it is the 
most acceptable and the only efficient acknowledgment we can 
make of the superior blessings and endowments by which we are 
so indulgently distinguished from these nations, to extend the in- 
fluence and the participation, both by enterprise and policy, even 
if our commerce may not be benefitted ; and if we gain no other 
recompense than the satisfaction of our own minds in the amelio- 
rated condition of others, and the opportunity we have made to 
ourselves of exemplifying our own gratitude.* Whilst one slave 
* The dissuasion from barbarities of which millions are now the victims, as the 
descriptions of the customs of Ashantee- and the interior have shewn, and the interests of 
science, render this duty more imperious. It has been well observed, " apologies for our 
