An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African - Translated from a Latin Dissertation, Which Was Honoured with the First Prize in the University of Cambridge, for the Year 1785, with Additions by Thomas Clarkson
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I have now the pleasure to say, that the accounts of these disinterested gentlemen, whom I consulted on the occasion, are confirmed by all the books which I have ever perused upon slavery, except those which have been written by _merchants, planters, &c_. They are confirmed by Sir _Hans Sloane's_ Voyage to Barbadoes; _Griffith Hughes's_ History of the same island, printed 1750; an Account of North America, by _Thomas Jeffries_, 1761; all _Benezet's_ works, &c. &c. and particularly by Mr. _Ramsay's_ Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of the African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies; a work which is now firmly established; and, I may add in a very extraordinary manner, in consequence of the controversy which this gentleman has sustained with the _Cursory Remarker_, by which several facts which were mentioned in the original copy of my own work, before the controversy began, and which had never appeared in any work upon the subject, have been brought to light. Nor has it received less support from a letter, published only last week, from Capt. J.S. Smith, of the Royal Navy, to the Rev. Mr. Hill; on the former of whom too high encomiums cannot be bestowed, for standing forth in that noble and disinterested manner, in behalf of an injured character. I have now only to solicit the reader again, that he will make a favourable allowance for the present work, not only from those circumstances which I have mentioned, but from the consideration, that only two months are allowed by the University for these their annual compositions. Should he however be unpropitious to my request, I must console myself with the reflection, (a reflection that will always afford me pleasure, even amidst the censures of the great,) that by undertaking the cause of the unfortunate _Africans_, I have undertaken, as far as my abilities would permit, the cause of injured |
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