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rest of the negroes, who were fortunate enough to escape, and have hid themselves in inaccessible caves, should not find anything on their return to nourish and continue their life.

When slaves to the number of 500 or 600 are obtained, they are sent to Lobeid, with an escort of country people, and about fifty soldiers, under the command of an officer. In order to prevent escape, a sheba is hung round the necks of the adults. A sheba is a young tree, about eight feet long, and two inches thick, and which has a fork at the top; it is so tied to the neck of the poor creature, that the trunk of the tree hangs down in the front, and the fork is closed behind the neck with a cross-piece of timber, or tied together with strips cut out of a fresh skin; and in this situation the slave, in order to be able to walk at all, is obliged to take the tree into his hands, and to carry it before him. But none can endure this very long; and to render it easier, the one in advance takes the tree of the man behind him on his shoulder." In this way, the men carrying the sheba, the boys tied together by the wrists, the women and children walking at liberty, and the old and feeble tottering along leaning on their relations, the whole of the captives are driven into Egypt, there to be exposed for sale in the slave-market. Thus negroes and Nubians are distributed over the East, through Persia, Arabia, India, etc."

From this, it appears that there have been two distinct slave trades going on with Africa—the slave trade on the west coast, for the supply of America and the European colonies, and the slave trade on the north-east, for the supply of Egypt, Turkey and the East. The one may be called the Christian, the other the Mahommedan slave trade. The one has been legally abolished, the other is as vigorously prosecuted as ever; and negroes are bought and sold daily in the public slave markets of Cairo and Constantinople. The Mahommedans, it is said, treat their negroes with more kindness than the Christians. And while the slaves of the west are all negroes, in the east there are slaves of all countries, Asiatics as well as Africans; as was the case in Greece, Rome, and other countries of the ancient world.

We return to the western slave trade. About the year 1750, this trade was carried on with extraordinary vigor. All the great nations had factories on the Guinea coast, and ships of all nations came periodically to carry off their valuable cargoes, which, it is supposed, did not fall short of 100,000 negroes annually. In thirty years, at this rate, Scotland would be emptied of its present population. So much has the demand for slaves been confined to America, that it may be said, that but for the discovery of America, negro slavery would never have existed. Negro slavery was a device struck out in a bold and unconscientious age to meet a great emergency. When Europe, as we have seen, had discovered the New World, with all its riches, and found the aborigines there useless as laborers, and fast disappearing, brokenhearted, into their graves, provoked at so untoward an occurrence, she looked about in no very scrupulous mood, for some other population less delicately framed, whom she might compel to help her through the crisis. Her eye lighted on the brawny figure of the negro, and the whole difficulty vanished. Here was the individual specially to dig in mines, and work in sugar planta

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tions. What s convenient as to use the old continent for the purpose of subjugating the new one?

Having sketched the origin and progress of the slave trade, we have now to trace the history of its nominal abolition. Possibly, if we had the means of knowing, we should find that from the year 1512, when Cardinal Ximenes protested against the introduction of negroes into America, down to the year 1787, when Clarkson and Wilberforce began the great struggle, there were never wanting in the world good and benevolent men, who saw the injustice of the trade, were grieved inwardly when they thought of it, and even denounced it in conversation. As cultivated feeling advanced, so there was a growing feeling that the slave trade was a wrong thing.

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About the year 1650 Morgan Goodwin publicly broached the subject by writing upon it. A century later two members of the society of Friends in America, John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, endeavored to get the people of their own persuasion to abandon the traffic. Benezet founded and taught a negro school in Philadelphia, and denounced the slave trade in various publications. So powerful was the effect produced by these two men that the Friends in America emancipated their slaves. In 1772, through the influence of the benevolent Granville Sharpe, the English Bench made the famous decision, that when a negro puts his foot on English ground he is free." In 1785, the slave trade was proposed as the subject of a prize essay at Cambridge. The prize was gained by Thomas Clarkson. On Sunday, the 28th of October, 1787, Wilberforce made this entry in his journal, God Almighty has placed before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." The reformation of manners he did not accomplish, but the suppression of the slave trade he did. Clarkson and Wilberforce, the twin spirits of the movement, were soon able to form a powerful confederacy, including men of all parties, and to shake the mind' of the nation.

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In 1787, Wilberforce first mooted the question in Parliament, and the subject was continued to be agitated for many years, the friends of abolition gradually gaining strength amid most strenuous opposition, until the bill for the total abolition of the British slave trade was passed, and received the royal assent in March, 1807. At first, the penalty for continuing the traffic was simply pecuniary; in 1811, an act was carried by Lord Brougham, making it felony, punishable by transportation for fourteen years, or imprisonment at hard labor. This being found inadequate, in 1824, the slave trade was declared piracy, and the punishment death. In 1837, the punishment was again changed into imprisonment for life.

Erelong all the foreign powers imitated Great Britain, and the United States and Brazil made the traffic piracy, punishable with death. And, with the exception of the United States, all have agreed to the mutual right of search; that is, each has agreed to permit its ships to be searched at sea by the ships of the others, so as to detect any slaves who may be on board.

To import negroes from Africa, is now, therefore, an illegal act, by the law of all civilized nations. Startling as the assertion is, the slave trade is now no more abolished than it ever was! This appaling fact is proved beyond the

possibility of doubt, that all that has been done has only aggravated the evil it was intended to destroy. It has changed, what was formerly a legal trade, pursued openly by respectable persons, into a contraband trade, pursued secretly by blackguards and desperadoes. It is an ascertained fact that no illicit trade can be suppressed if the profits be more than thirty per cent. Those of the slave trade average 180 or 200 per cent. Accordingly, since the slave trade was declared illegal, a vigorous contraband traffic has been carried on by French, Spanish, Portuguese, and American crews, the wages of the common sailors often being forty dollars a month. The captain, and often the sailors in these ships, are said to be men of ability, not only as seamen, but in other respects. Cuba and Brazil are the principal slaveimporting countries. The annual delivery of negroes to Brazil is about 80,000, to Cuba about 60,000, and if we add 10,000 for all other places, the annual delivery of negroes in America amounts to 150,000; that is to say, nearly double the largest annual delivery ever known to have been made before Wilberforce began his labors.

It is calculated that for every ten negroes Africa parts with, America receives only three; the other seven die. The number 150,000 being that which America annually receives, there must, according to this estimate, be 500,000 negroes every year, collected in the interior of Africa for the American market, of whom-in the journey from the interior to the coast,-during the passage across the Atlantic,-and in the process of acclimating, soon after landing there perish-men, women, boys, and girls-the enormous number of 350,000!

While the trade was legal, the ships designed for carrying slaves, were, in a measure, constructed like other vessels, and the number of negroes a vessel was allowed to carry, was fixed by law. All this is now altered. By 'making the traffic illegal, all power is lost of regulating it. In order to escape the cruisers, all slave-ships are constructed on the principle of fast-sailing. The risk of being captured takes away all inducements, from mere selfish motives, to make the cargo moderate; on the contrary, it is now an object to make the cargo as large as possible, for then, the escape of one cargo out of three will amply repay the dealer. Accordingly, the negroes now are packed in the slave ships literally (and this is the comparison always used) like herrings in a barrel. They have neither standing room, nor sitting room, nor lying room; and as for change of position during the voyage, the thing is impossible. They are cooped up anyhow, squeezed into crevices, or jammed up against the curved planks. The allowance in breadth for an adult negro is nine inches, so that the only possible posture is on the side. The following is a brief description given by an eye-witness, of the unloading of a captured slaver, which had been brought into Sierra Leone: "The captives were now counted; their numbers, sex, and age, written down, for the information of the court of mixed commission. The task was repulsive. As the hold had been divided for the separation of the men and the women, those on deck were first counted; they were then driven forward, crowded as much as possible, and the women were drawn up through the small hatchway from their hot, dark confinement. A black boatswain seized them one by one, dragging

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