He stated that he should argue the
matter from evidence. He adverted to the character, situation, and means
of information of his own witnesses; and having divided his subject into
parts, the first of which related to the manner of reducing the natives
of Africa to a state of slavery, he handled it in the following
manner:--
He would begin, he said, with the first boundary of the trade. Captain
Wilson and Captain Hills, of His Majesty's navy, and Mr. Dalrymple, of
the land service, had concurred in stating, that in the country
contiguous to the river Senegal, when slave-ships arrived there, armed
parties were regularly sent out in the evening, who scoured the country,
and brought in their prey. The wretched victims were to be seen in the
morning bound back to back in the huts on shore, whence they were
conveyed, tied hand and foot, to the slave-ships. The design of these
ravages was obvious, because, when the Slave Trade was stopped, they
ceased. Mr. Kiernan spoke of the constant depredations by the Moors to
procure slaves. Mr. Wadstrom confirmed them. The latter gentleman showed
also that they were excited by presents of brandy, gunpowder, and such
other incentives; and that they were not only carried on by one
community against another, but that the kings were stimulated to
practise them in their territories, and on their own subjects: and in
one instance a chieftain, who, when intoxicated, could not resist the
demands of the slave merchants, had expressed, in a moment of reason, a
due sense of his own crime, and had reproached his Christian seducers.
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