_Lastly,_--Many of those whom we had transported by fraud and violence
from their native country, and still more of the descendants of others
who had fallen a sacrifice to our cruelties, and perished in the course
of nature, slaves in a foreign land, remained to suffer the dreadful
evils of West India bondage. It seemed to follow, that the earliest
opportunity consistent with their own condition, should be taken to free
those unhappy beings, the victims of our sordid cruelty; and all the
more to be pitied, as we were all the more to be blamed, because one
result of our transgression was the having placed them in so unnatural a
position, that their enemies might seem to be furnished with an argument
more plausible than sound, drawn from the Negro's supposed unfitness for
immediate emancipation.
In order to promote these four great objects, a society was formed in
May 1807, called the African Institution, and although, at first, its
labours were chiefly directed to the portion of the subject relating to
Africa, by degrees, as the extinction of the British Slave Trade was
accomplished, its care was chiefly bestowed on West India matters, which
were more within the power of this country than the slave traffic, still
carried on by foreign nations.
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