Cover Story Black History Month
added something as if [they] considered that we have now hardly any right to meddle with it, because the policy of the Trade has been recognised by the Legislature. My Lords, I should be glad to know if this Trade has been, at
any time, the subject of regulation by the Legislature, why it may not again be the subject of regulation, or Abolition, by the [same] Legislature? And why the Legislature can be considered to have power at one time which it has not at another time? Indeed, my Lords, it does not seem to me, that this mode of
defending, or rather of attempting to justify, evils, because they exist, and have long existed, would prevent forever the removal of any evil in this world. But to come nearer to ourselves. You know that the practice of piracy has been in existence longer than the Slave Trade; and that practice has not only been permitted, but sanctioned by the [British] Government whose subjects practise it; and this has been in use for four or five hundred years; and I do not see why that practice may not be as well defended as the Slave Trade, on the ground of the length of time during which it has subsisted; for, in point of justice, they are equal to each other. But it is said there is, in truth, no inhumanity in the African
Slave Trade, for that, practically speaking, we are doing the slaves on the Coast of Africa a great kindness by taking them from an infinitely worse condition than that in which we place them. My Lords, what right have we to insist upon making a man happier than he chooses to be? My Lords, all the inhabitants of Africa, not only appeal to your
John Scott, the Lord Chancellor in 1806; right: Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of London and a leading abolitionist
compassion, but demand justice of you, and I am confident that a British House of Lords will not refuse that demand.
Then Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of London, rose and said: I would first call the attention of your Lordships to the nature of this Trade on the Coast of Africa; and, for that purpose, it is necessary to inquire in what manner the Negroes are taken on the Coast. Your Lordships know in what mode they are made slaves. First, by kidnapping; next by means of pretended crimes; and, last of all, by the means of the breaking up of villages, and being taken in war. Now, my Lords, with regard to the first, I leave it to your Lord-
ships to say whether there is any humanity in the practice. If you examine the subject, you will also find that a great number of those who are sold as delinquents are accused and condemned, often falsely, but almost always of the most trivial offences; and for these crimes, the chief of which is witchcraft, innumerable families (the mother and her children) have been sold for slaves. And it is proved, incontestably, by evidence that a great part of
those who are called delinquents are accused for the very purpose of making them slaves. It is needless therefore to say that many thousands of them are falsely accused and condemned. My Lords, I beg leave to observe upon what has been stated by
[other] Noble Lords concerning slavery, that it has subsisted from the earliest ages of the world down to the present period, and [they]
52 | October 2011 | New African
It was the turn of the Lord Chancellor, John Scott: My Lords, I have not been in the internal parts of Africa, but I believe what is related of them by men whom I know to be impar- tial and diligent in their inquiries. From them I find that parents are torn from their children; children torn from their parents; husbands torn from their wives; wives from their husbands; all ties of blood and affection (for Negroes have affections as well as ourselves) torn up by the roots. My Lords, I have myself seen these unhappy creatures put to-
gether in heaps in the hold of a ship, which, with every possible attention to their accommodation, must still be intolerable; and I have heard proved, in courts of justice, facts still more dreadful, if possible, than those which I have seen. My Lords, I know that great evils have existed from age to age in
this world, but I know too that many of them have been remedied by the progress of civilisation; and is it not our duty, my Lords, to do everything in our power to remove them? Should we not, my Lords, exult in the consideration that we,
the inhabitants of a small island, at the extremity of the globe, al- most at its north pole, are become the morning star to enlighten the nations of the earth, and conduct them out of the shades of darkness into the realms of light, thus exhibiting to an astonished and admiring world the blessings of a free constitution? Should we neglect a duty of such importance which we owe to
our own character, as well as to the happiness of so large a portion of the human race; and that at a time when we know we can, with facility, perform that duty? My Lords, I cannot believe your Lord- ships will suffer to escape from you an opportunity so glorious.
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