And first he
would say, that the present deplorable state of that country, especially
when we reflected that her chief calamities were to be ascribed to us,
called for our generous aid, rather than justified any despair, on our
part, of her recovery, and still less a repetition of our injuries. On
what ground of theory or history did we act, when we supposed she was
never to be reclaimed? There was a time, which it might be now fit to
call to remembrance, when human sacrifices, and even this very practice
of the Slave Trade existed in our own island. Slaves, as we may read in
HENRY's _History of Great Britain_, were formerly an established article
of our exports. "Great numbers," he says, "were exported like cattle
from the British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the
Roman markets."--"Adultery, witchcraft, and debt," says the same
historian, "were probably some of the chief sources of supplying the
Roman market with British slaves--prisoners taken in war were added to
the number--there might be also among them some unfortunate gamesters,
who, after having lost all their goods, at length staked themselves,
their wives, and their children." Now every one of these sources of
slavery had been stated to be at this hour a source of slavery in
Africa.
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