im, and had been considered by others, as a sufficient proof of the
barbarity of the Africans, and of the inutility of abolishing the
Slave-trade. But they, who had used this fact, had suppressed several
circumstances relating to it. It appeared, on questioning Captain Frazer
afterward, that this boy had previously run away from his master three
several times; that the master had to pay his value, according to the
custom of the country, every time he was brought back; and that partly from
anger at the boy for running away so frequently, and partly to prevent a
repetition of the same expense, he determined to destroy him. Such was the
explanation of the signal instance, which was to fix barbarity on all
Africa, as it came out in the cross-examination of Captain Frazer. That
this African master was unenlightened and barbarous, he freely admitted:
but what would an enlightened and civilized West Indian have done in a
similar case? He would quote the law, passed in the West Indies in 1722,
which he had just cast his eye upon in the book of evidence, by which law
this very same crime of running away was by the legislature of an island,
by the grave and deliberate sentence of an enlightened legislature,
punished with death; and this, not in the case only of the third offence,
but even in the very first instance. It was enacted, "That, if any Negro or
other slave should withdraw himself from his master for the term of six
months; or any slave, who was absent, should not return within that time,
every such person should suffer death." There was also another West Indian
law, by which every Negro was armed against his fellow-negro, for he was
authorized to kill every runaway slave; and he had even a reward held out
to him for so doing. Let the House now contrast the two cases. Let them ask
themselves which of the two exhibited the greater barbarity; and whether
they could possibly vote for the continuance of the Slave-trade, upon the
principle, that the Africans had shown themselves to be a race of
incorrigible barbarians?

Something like an opposite argument, but with a like view, had been
maintained by others on this subject. It had been said, in justification of
the trade, that the Africans had derived some little civilization from
their intercourse with us. Yes: we had given them just enough of the forms
of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials to their other
modes of perpetrating the most atrocious crimes.