In order to form an opinion with any degree of justness concerning slavery in America, we must not only be possessed of true and accurate information as to its actual condition, but we must also recur to its origin and history, inquire how it came there; that thus a just share of the blame, if blame there be, may be laid upon its originators, and not the whole of it be thrown — as by the unreflecting multitude it is too apt to be done — on those who happen to have been born where it exists. Now, looking at the subject from this last point of view, it may justly be said, that slavery is the misfortune rather than the fault of America. It is owing mainly to her situation, as a part of the New or Western World, that she has slavery, and England not. Had England been situated where Virginia or where Cuba is, — in the New, instead of in the Old World, —-would not England be as full of African slaves at this moment as they are? Was it not Englishmen who in great part supplied America with the slaves she has — English ships, with English crews, sailing from English ports, sent forth by English owners, under the full approval of the English Government?[1] In the year 1786, England had engaged in the slave-trade no fewer than 130 vessels (and this was full fourteen years after the English courts had declared
- ↑ "The first slaves were brought into Virginia by a Dutch ship, in 1620; but after that date the English had nearly a monopoly of the traffic. So late as 1807, Dr. Chalmers, then a young man, witnessed the departure of a slave-ship from Liverpool, on her voyage to Africa, when "the ladies," he says, " waved their handkerchief: from the shore, to sanctify what was infamous, and deck the splendid villainy of the trade." — See Hanna's Life of Chalmers, vol. i., ch. 6.
