Hence, if we were to take the vast
extent of space occupied by these crimes and sufferings from the heart
of Africa to its shores, and that which they filled on the continent of
America and the islands adjacent, and were to join the crimes and
sufferings in one to those in the other, by the crimes and sufferings
which took place in the track of the vessels successively crossing the
Atlantic, we should behold a vast belt as it were of physical and moral
evil, reaching through land and ocean to the length of nearly half the
circle of the globe.
The next view which I shall take of this evil will be as it relates to
the difficulty of subduing it.
This difficulty may be supposed to have been more than ordinarily great.
Many evils of a public nature, which existed in former times, were the
offspring of ignorance and superstition, and they were subdued of course
by the progress of light and knowledge. But the evil in question began
in avarice. It was nursed also by worldly interest. It did not therefore
so easily yield to the usual correctives of disorders in the world. We
may observe also, that the interest by which it was thus supported, was
not that of a few individuals, nor of one body, but of many bodies of
men.
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