Читать книгу A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Addressed to the freeholders and other inhabitants of Yorkshire онлайн

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Such was Smith’s relation, near a century ago, of the judgment formed by the Africans, of the effects of their intercourse with the Christian nations. Such is the acknowledgment of Mr. Parke, who is certainly disposed to paint the effects of the Slave Trade in the softest colours. Is it possible for any one who calls himself a Christian, and a member of the British Empire, to read the passage without the deepest humiliation and sorrow, and without longing also, not only to stop the guilty commerce we have so long carried on, but to endeavour to repair, in some degree, the wrongs of Africa, and with active but tardy kindness, to impart to her some small share of the overflowings of our superabundant blessings?

“But surely,” you will long ere now have been ready to exclaim, “Surely the facts which you have laid before us, though believed by the abolitionists, could not have been established in the judgment of the majority of the House of Commons;”—and you may justly require some decisive evidence in proof of them.