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I come now to the evil, as it has been proved to arise in the third
case; or to consider the situation of the unhappy victims of the trade,
when their painful voyages are over, or after they have been landed upon
their destined shores. And here we are to view them, first under the
degrading light of cattle: we are to see them examined, handled,
selected, separated, and sold. Alas! relatives are separated from
relatives, as if, like cattle, they had no rational intellect, no power
of feeling the nearness of relationship, nor sense of the duties
belonging to the ties of life! We are next to see them labouring; and
this for the benefit of those to whom they are under no obligation, by
any law either natural or divine, to obey. We are to see them, if
refusing the commands of their purchasers, however weary, or feeble, or
indisposed, subject to corporal punishments, and if forcibly resisting
them to death: we are to see them in a state of general degradation and
misery. The knowledge which their oppressors have of their own crime, in
having violated the rights of nature, and of the disposition of the
injured to seek all opportunities of revenge, produces a fear which
dictates to them the necessity of a system of treatment, by which they
shall keep up a wide distinction between the two, and by which the noble
feelings of the latter shall be kept down, and their spirits broken.
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