"It is a melancholy fact, but it can be abundantly proved, that great
numbers of the unfortunate strangers, who are carried from Africa to our
colonies, are fraudulently and forcibly taken from their native soil. To
descant but upon a single instance of the kind must be productive of
pain to the ear of sensibility and freedom. Consider the sensations of
the person, who is thus carried off by the ruffians, who have been
lurking to intercept him. Separated from everything which he esteems in
life, without the possibility even of bidding his friends adieu, beheld
him overwhelmed in tears--wringing his hands in despair--looking
backwards upon the spot where all his hopes and wishes lay;--while his
family at home are waiting for him with anxiety and suspense--are
waiting, perhaps, for sustenance--are agitated between hope and
fear--till length of absence confirms the latter, and they are
immediately plunged into inconceivable misery and distress.
"If this instance, then, is sufficiently melancholy of itself, and is at
all an act of oppression, how complicated will our guilt appear who are
the means of snatching away thousands annually in the same manner, and
who force them and their families into the same unhappy situation,
without either remorse or shame!"
Having proceeded to show, in a more particular manner than I can detail
here, how, by means of the Slave Trade, we oppressed the stranger, I
made an inquiry into the other branch of the subject, or how far we had
a knowledge of his heart.
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