been proved, that the
usual proportion of these was never less than a fourth of the whole
cargo on the coast, and also, that the kidnapping of children was very
prevalent there.

All these atrocities, he said, were fully substantiated by the evidence;
and here he should do injustice to his cause, if he were not to make a
quotation from the speech of Mr. B. Edwards in the Assembly of Jamaica,
who, though he was hostile to his propositions, had yet the candour to
deliver himself in the following manner there. "I am persuaded," says
he, "that Mr. Wilberforce has been rightly informed as to the manner in
which slaves are generally procured. The intelligence I have collected
from my own negroes abundantly confirms his account; and I have not the
smallest doubt, that in Africa the effects of this trade are precisely
such as he has represented them. The whole, or the greatest part, of
that immense continent is a field of warfare and desolation; a
wilderness, in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other. That
this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not
originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the
Slave Trade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the Sugar Islands may be
convinced that it is so, who will enquire of any African negroes, on
their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity.
The assertion that it is otherwise, is mockery and insult."

But it was not only by acts of outrage that the Africans were brought
into bondage. The very administration of justice was turned into an
engine for that end. The smallest offence was punished by a fine equal
to the value of a slave. Crimes were also fabricated; false accusations
were resorted to; and persons were sometimes employed to seduce the
unwary into practices with a view to the conviction and the sale of
them.

It was another effect of this trade, that it corrupted the morals of
those who carried it on. Every fraud was used to deceive the ignorance
of the natives by false weights and measures, adulterated commodities,
and other impositions of a like sort. These frauds were even
acknowledged by many who had themselves practised them, in obedience to
the orders of their superiors. For the honour of the mercantile
character of the country, such a traffic ought immediately to be
suppressed.

Yet these things, however clearly proved by positive testimony, by the
concession of opponents, by particular in