says, "were exported like cattle
from the British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the
Roman markets."--"Adultery, witchcraft, and debt," says the same
historian, "were probably some of the chief sources of supplying the
Roman market with British slaves--prisoners taken in war were added to
the number--there might be also among them some unfortunate gamesters,
who, after having lost all their goods, at length staked themselves,
their wives, and their children." Now every one of these sources of
slavery had been stated to be at this hour a source of slavery in
Africa. If these practices, therefore, were to be admitted as proofs of
the natural incapacity of its inhabitants, why might they not have been
applied to ancient Britain? Why might not then some Roman senator,
pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, that
these were a people who were destined never to be free; who were without
the understanding necessary for the attainment of useful arts; depressed
by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, and created
to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the world? But, happily,
since that time, notwithstanding what would then have been the justness
of these predictions, we had emerged from barbarism. We were now raised
to a situation which exhibited a striking contrast to every circumstance
by which a Roman might have characterized us, and by which we now
characterized Africa. There was indeed one thing wanting to complete the
contrast, and to clear us altogether from the imputation of acting even
to this hour as barbarians; for we continued to this hour a barbarous
traffic in slaves; we continued it even yet, in spite of all our great
pretensions. We were once as obscure among the nations of the earth, as
savage in our manners, as debased in our morals, as degraded in our
understandings, as these unhappy Africans. But in the lapse of a long
series of years, by a progression slow, and for a time almost
imperceptible, we had become rich in a variety of acquirements. We were
favoured above measure in the gifts of Providence, we were unrivalled in
commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy
and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we
were in the possession of peace, of liberty, and of happiness; we were
under the guidance of a mild and a beneficent religion; and we were
protected by impartial laws and the purest admin