ead them. At the same time it must be observed,
that seamen were never paid in this manner in any other employ; and that
the African wages, though nominally higher for the sake of procuring
hands, were thus made to be actually lower than in other trades.

The loss by death was so similar, that it did not signify whether the
calculation on a given number was made either at this or the other port.
I had, however, a better opportunity at this than I had at the other, of
knowing the loss, as it related to those whose constitutions had been
ruined, or who had been rendered incapable by disease, of continuing
their occupation at sea. For the slave-vessels which returned to
Liverpool, sailed immediately into the docks, so that I saw at once
their sickly and ulcerated crews. The number of vessels, too, was so
much greater from this, than from any other port, that their sick made a
more conspicuous figure in the infirmary; and they were seen also more
frequently in the streets.

With respect to their treatment, nothing could be worse. It seemed to me
to be but one barbarous system from the beginning to the end. I do not
say barbarous, as if premeditated, but it became so in consequence of
the savage habits gradually formed by a familiarity with miserable
sights, and with a course of action inseparable from the trade. Men in
their first voyages usually disliked the traffic; and if they were happy
enough then to abandon it, they usually escaped the disease of a
hardened heart. But if they went a second and a third time, their
disposition became gradually changed. It was impossible for them to be
accustomed to carry away men and women by force, to keep them in chains,
to see their tears, to hear their mournful lamentations, to behold the
dead and the dying, to be obliged to keep up a system of severity amidst
all this affliction,--in short, it was impossible for them to be
witnesses, and this for successive voyages, to the complicated mass of
misery passing in a slave-ship, without losing their finer feelings, or
without contracting those habits of moroseness and cruelty which would
brutalize their nature. Now, if we consider that persons could not
easily become captains (and to these the barbarities were generally
chargeable by actual perpetration, or by consent) till they had been two
or three voyages in this employ, we shall see the reason why it would be
almost a miracle, if they, who were thus employed in it, were not rather