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a kind of perpetual warfare among the ignorant and miserable people of Africa; and instances have not been wanting, where, by the most shameful breach of faith, they have trepanned and made slaves of the sellers as well as the sold.[1]
- ↑ “About the same time (the reign of queen Elizabeth) a traffic in the human species, called Negroes, was introduced into England, which is one of the most odious and unnatural branches of trade the sordid and avaricious mind of mortals ever invented.—It had been carried on before this period by Genoese traders, who bought a patent from Charles the fifth, containing an exclusive right of carrying Negroes from the Portuguese settlements in Africa, to America and the West Indies; but the English nation had not yet engaged in the iniquitous traffic.—One William Hawkins, an expert English seaman, having made several voyages to the coast of Guinea, and from thence to Brazil and the West Indies, had acquired considerable knowledge of the countries. At his death he left his journals with his son, John Hawkins, in which he described the lands of America and the West Indies as exceedingly rich and fertile, but utterly neglected for want of hands to improve them. He represented the natives of Europe as unequal to the task in such a scorching climate; but those of Africa as well adapted to undergo the labours requisite. Upon which John Hawkins immediately formed a design of transporting Africans into the western world; and having drawn a plan for the execution of it, he laid it before some of his opulent neighbours for
