ica to purchase slaves for foreign markets,
and lose the advantages of all the proper articles of commerce, which
that country affords. You bury your seamen upon the pestiferous
shores; and, shocking to humanity! make monsters of all you engage in
the traffic.

Who are more brutal than the Captains of vessels in the slave trade?
Not even the tawny savage of the American wilds, who thirsts after the
blood of the Christian, and carries off his scalp the trophy of
splendid victory!

They even countenance the practice of the ancients, in seeing a sturdy
mastiff tear in pieces some poor wretch of their hateful cargoes, or
in viewing their wreathes and tortures, when smarting under the lash
of a seasoned cat.[36]

It is time to abolish these enormities, and to stay such repeated
insults from being offered to Divine Providence: Some dreadful curse
from heaven may be the effect of them, and the innocent be made to
suffer for the guilty.

What, will you not consider that the Africans are men? that they have
human souls to be saved? that they are born free and independent? A
violation of which prerogatives is an infringement upon the laws of
God.

But, are these the only crimes you are guilty of in pursuing the
trade? No--you stir up the harmless Africans to war, and stain their
fields with blood: you keep constant hostile ferment in their
territories, in order to procure captives for your uses; some you
purchase with a few trifling articles, and waft to distant shores to
be made the instruments of grandeur, pride and luxury.

You commit also the crime of kidnapping others, whom you forcibly drag
from their beloved country, from the bosoms of their dearest
relatives; so leave a wife without a husband, a sister without a
brother, and a helpless infant to bemoan the loss of its indulgent
parent.

Could you but see the agonizing pangs of these distressed mortals, in
the hour of their captivity, when deprived of every thing that is dear
to them, it would make even the heathenish heart to melt with sorrow;
like a noble Senator of old, death is their choice in preference to
lingering out their lives in ignominious slavery--and often do we see
them meet it with a smile.

The horrors of the grave intimidate not even the delicate females; too
many melancholy instances are recorded of their plunging into the
deep, and carrying with them a tender infant at their breast; even in
my own recollection, suicide has been committed in