44 CHILD RESCUED FROM DEATH. otherwise, their fate is usually a sad one. in the market may cause their death. Even delay The Rev. Mr. Baggs said, "He had proof that when marauding parties come with their booty in slaves to the coast, and find no vessel, they kill the slaves because of the expense of sending them back.”* Mr. Falconbridge said, "He has seen slaves who were offered for sale and refused cruelly beaten."† Mr. Penny, who had made eleven voyages as captain of slavers, deposes, "He has been repeatedly informed that slaves bought for sale and rejected by the slavedealers on account of disease or otherwise are destroyed as not worth their food."+ Sir George Yonge "saw a beautiful child, about five years old, brought from the Bullam shore, opposite Sierra Leone. As the child was too young to be an object of trade, the persons who had him to sell gave him no food, and threatened to throw him into the river. Sir George, to save his life, offered a quarter-cask of Madeira for him, which was accepted,-brought him to England, and made a present of him to the Marquis of Landsdown. He understood this child had been kidnapped."§ Mr. Arnold, surgeon on board a slaver, testified, "One day a woman, with a child in her arms, was brought to us to be sold. The captain refused to pur. chase her, not wishing to be plagued with a child on board: so she was taken back to shore. On the following morning she was again brought to us, but without the child, and apparently in great sorrow. * Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet N, 5. Report cited, Part I. Sheet I. WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE? 45 The black trader admitted that the child had been killed in the night to accommodate the sale."* What a lifting of the veil upon a terrible series of atrocities is there, even in these brief extracts, coldly and dispassionately worded as they are! For what a catalogue of crimes were they responsible who sent slavers to the African coast! What wars have they not stirred up! What murders instigated! What temptations have they not presented to the cupidity of savage sovereign and subject alike! If the King of Dahomey, or some other royal barbarian, perverted criminal law to obtain convictions as a source of revenue, if a black trader put to death the infant that the mother might be salable,-who were the tempters to such acts? who the original authors of this wickedness? The horrors of the Middle Passage were surpassed by those that necessarily preceded it. The ministers of the British Crown cannot be accused of sentimentalism. They are no declaimers, no propagandists, no extremists in speculative philanthropy. Their humanity is tempered with moderation and suggested by official evidence. Yet with what perseverance have they labored, even to the present day, after themselves abolishing the slave-trade in 1807, to procure its subsequent abolition by all civilized nations! Within twenty-five years-to wit, between 1818 and 1842-they concluded twenty-three treaties on the subject, with Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Naples, Tuscany, Sardinia, the Hanse Towns, the United States, Hayti, Texas, Mexico, Colombia, New Granada, Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, Chili, Peru, and Bolivia. * Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet N, 4. 46 TESTIMONY OF A BRITISH MINISTER, Lord Palmerston, speaking in the House of Lords in 1844, gave some of the reasons which stirred the Government to move in this matter. He said : "The negroes destined for the slave-trade are not taken from the neighborhood where they are embarked. A great number come from the interior. Many are captives made in wars excited by thirst for the gain procured by the sale of the prisoners. But the greatest number arise from kidnapping expeditions, and an organized system of man-stealing in the interior of. Africa. "When the time approaches to set out with the slave-caravans for the coast, the kidnappers surround a peaceful village at night, set it on fire, and seize on the inhabitants, killing all who resist. If the village attacked is situated on a mountain offering facilities for flight, and the inhabitants take refuge in the caverns, the kidnappers kindle large fires at the entrance; and those who are sheltered there, placed between death by suffocation and slavery, are forced to give themselves up. If the fugitives take refuge on the heights, the assailants render themselves masters of all the springs and wells, and the unfortunates, devoured by thirst, return to barter liberty for life. "The prisoners made, they proceed to the choice. The robust individuals of both sexes, and the children of above six or seven years of age, are set aside to form part of the caravan which is to be driven to the seashore. They rid themselves of the children under six years by killing them on the spot, and abandon the aged and infirm, thus condemning them to die of hunger. "The caravan sets out. Men, women, and children traverse the burning sands and rocky defiles of the mountains of Africa barefoot and almost naked. The AND HIS DEDUCTION THEREFROM. 47 feeble are stimulated by the whip; the strong are secured by chaining them together or placing them under a yoke. Many fall from exhaustion on the road, and die, or become the prey of wild beasts. "On reaching the sea-shore, they are penned up, and crowded together in buildings called barracoons, where they fall a prey to epidemics. Death often cruelly thins their ranks before the arrival of a slave-trader."* Lord Palmerston's general deduction from these and other facts connected with the trade is contained in the same speech. "It is calculated," he says, "that of three negroes seized in the interior of Africa, to be sent into slavery, but one reaches his destination: the two others die in the course of the operations of the slave-trade. Whatever may be the number yearly landed, therefore, we must triple it to obtain the true number of human beings which this detestable traffic annually carries off from Africa." A portion of the facts which form the data of such a calculation remain to be considered,-the manner, namely, of stowing and of treating negroes in slaveships, and the mortality thence resulting. *Speech of Lord Palmerston, delivered in the House of Lords, July 26, 1844. 48 NUMBER OF SLAVES CARRIED CHAPTER VI. HOW SLAVES WERE TRANSPORTED FROM AFRICA. THE Report of the Lords in Council, from which I have already so copiously quoted, furnishes exact and conclusive evidence as to the space commonly allowed to slaves during their passage. The vessels employed were usually from one hundred to two hundred and fifty or three hundred tons burden,— averaging, in early times, little over one hundred tons, but towards the end of the eighteenth century being of the capacity of one hundred and fifty or two hundred tons. The universal testimony is that the average number carried per ton was two persons and upwards. John Anderson, master of slaver, "conceives that two slaves to a ton cannot crowd a ship." Sir George Yonge (of the British Navy) says, "The usual allowance of space is two slaves to a ton, sometimes three. If two were allowed to a ton, he thought there would be room enough." A bill had been introduced into Parliament, which proposed to limit the number for each ton. Evidence was taken as to its effect, resulting as follows. James Penny had made eleven voyages as captain of slaver He was asked, "If the blank of the bill is filled with one and a half to a ton, will it, in your opinion, tend to the abolition of the trade?" Answer, "I am clearly of opinion that it will."* This witness handed in a table, of which the accuracy was afterwards endorsed by Mr. Tarleton, a Liverpool * Lords of Council Report, Minutes of Evidence, p. 41. |