enough, upon meer supposition or report, to assert the contrary.

[Footnote A: Collection, vol. 1, page 202.]


[Footnote B: Idem, page 245.]


[Footnote C: Note, This plea falls of itself, for if the Negroes
apprehended they should be cruelly put to death, if they were not sent
away, why do they manifest such reluctance and dread as they generally
do, at being brought from their native country? William Smith, at page
28, says, "_The Gambians abhor slavery, and will attempt any thing, tho'
never so desperate, to avoid it_," and Thomas Philips, in his account of
a voyage he performed to the coast of Guinea, writes, "_They, the
Negroes, are so loth to leave their own country, that they have often
leaped out of the canoe, boat, or ship, into the sea, and kept under
water till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up_."]

It was long after the Portugueze had made a practice of violently
forcing the natives of Africa into slavery, that we read of the
different Negroe nations making war upon each other, and selling their
captives. And probably this was not the case, till those bordering on
the coast, who had been used to supply the vessels with necessaries, had
become corrupted by their intercourse with the Europeans, and were
excited by drunkenness and avarice to join them in carrying on those
wicked schemes, by which those unnatural wars were perpetrated; the
inhabitants kept in continual alarms; the country laid waste; and, as
William Moor expresses it, _Infinite numbers sold into slavery_. But
that the Europeans are the principal cause of these devastations, is