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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Probable Effects of the Slave Trade.

It might almost preclude the necessity of inquiring into the actual effects of the Slave Trade, to consider, arguing from the acknowledged and never failing operation of certain given causes, what must necessarily be its consequences. How surely does a demand for any commodities produce a supply. How certainly should we anticipate the multiplication of thefts, from any increase in number of the receivers of stolen goods. In the present instance, the demand is for men, women, and children. And, can we doubt that illicit methods will be resorted to for supplying them? especially in a country like Africa, imperfectly civilized, and divided in general into petty communities? We might almost anticipate with certainty, the specific modes by which the supply of Slaves is in fact furnished, and foretell the sure effects on the laws, usages, and state of society of the African continent. But any doubts we might be willing to entertain on this head are but too decisively removed, when we proceed in the next place to examine, what are the actual means by which Slaves are commonly supplied, and what are the Slave Trade’s known and ascertained consequences? To this part of my subject I intreat peculiar attention; the rather, because I have often found an idea to prevail; that it is the state of the Slaves in the West Indies, the improvement of which is the great object of the Abolitionists. On the contrary, from first to last, I desire it may be borne in mind, that Africa is the primary subject of our regard. It is the effects of the Slave Trade on Africa, against which chiefly we raise our voices, as constituting a sum of guilt and misery, hitherto unequalled in the annals of the world.