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The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) by Thomas Clarkson
page 49 of 763 (06%)
examining this part of it, we shall find that we have a no less
frightful picture to behold than in the former cases; or that, while the
miseries endured by the unfortunate Africans excite our pity on the one
hand, the vices, which are connected with them, provoke our indignation
and abhorrence on the other. The Slave Trade, in this point of view,
must strike us as an immense mass of evil on account of the criminality
attached to it, as displayed in the various branches of it, which have
already been examined. For, to take the counterpart of the evil in the
first of these, can we say that no moral turpitude is to be placed to
the account of those, who, living on the continent of Africa, give birth
to the enormities, which take place in consequence of the prosecution of
this trade? Is not that man made morally worse, who is induced to become
a tiger to his species, or who, instigated by avarice, lies in wait in
the thicket to get possession of his fellow-man? Is no injustice
manifest in the land, where the prince, unfaithful to his duty, seizes
his innocent subjects, and sells them for slaves? Are no moral evils
produced among those communities, which make war upon other communities
for the sake of plunder, and without any previous provocation or
offence? Does no crime attach to those, who accuse others falsely, or
who multiply and divide crimes for the sake of the profit of the
punishment, and who for the same reason continue the use of barbarous
and absurd ordeals as a test of innocence or guilt?

In the second of these branches, the counterpart of the evil is to be
seen in the conduct of those who purchase the miserable natives in their
own country, and convey them to distant lands. And here questions,
similar to the former, may be asked. Do they experience no corruption of
their nature, or become chargeable with no violation of right, who, when
they go with their ships to this continent, know the enormities which
their visits there will occasion, who buy their fellow-creature man, and
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