[Footnote 050: Were this not the case, the government of a country could have no right to take cognizance of crimes, and punish them, but every individual, if injured, would have a right to punish the aggressor with his own hand, which is contrary to the notions of all civilized men, whether among the ancients or the moderns.]
[Footnote 051: This same notion is entertained even by the African princes, who do not permit the person injured to revenge his injury, or to receive the convict as his slave. But if the very person who has been _injured_, does not possess him, much less ought any other person whatsoever.]
[Footnote 052: There are instances on the African continent, of _parents_ selling their _children_. As the slaves of this description are so few, and are so irregularly obtained, we did not think it worth our while to consider them as forming an order; and, as God never gave the parent a power over his child to make him _miserable_, we trust that any farther mention of them will be unnecessary.]
[Footnote 053: Abbè Raynal, Hist. Phil. vol. 4. P. 154.]
It remains only now to examine by what arguments those, who _receive_ or _purchase_ their fellow-creatures into slavery, defend the _commerce_. Their first plea is, "that they receive those with propriety, who are convicted of crimes, because they are delivered into their hands by _their own magistrates_." But what is this to you _receivers_? Have the unfortunate _convicts_ been guilty of injury to _you_? Have they broken _your_ treaties? Have they plundered _your_ ships? Have they carried _your_ wives and children into slavery, that _you_ should thus retaliate? Have they offended _you_ even by word or gesture?
But if the African convicts are innocent with respect to you; if you have not even the shadow of a claim upon their persons; by what right do you receive them? "By the laws of the Africans," you will say; "by which it is positively allowed."--But can _laws_ alter the nature of vice? They may give it a sanction perhaps: it will still be immutably the same, and, though dressed in the outward habiliments of _honour_, will still be _intrinsically base_.
But alas! you do not only attempt to defend yourselves by these arguments, but even dare to give your actions the appearance of lenity, and assume _merit_ from your _baseness_! and how first ought you particularly to blush, when you assert, "that prisoners of war are only purchased from the hands of their conquerors, _to deliver them from death_." Ridiculous defence! can the most credulous believe it? You entice the Africans to war; you foment their quarrels; you supply them with arms and ammunition, and all--from the _motives of benevolence_. Does a man set fire to an house, for the purpose of rescuing the inhabitants from the flames? But if they are only purchased, to _deliver them from death_; why, when they are delivered into your hands, as protectors, do you torture them with hunger? Why do you kill them with fatigue? Why does the whip deform their bodies, or the knife their limbs? Why do you sentence them to death? to a death, infinitely more excruciating than that from which you so kindly saved them? What answer do you make to this? for if you had not humanely preserved them from the hands of their conquerors, a quick death perhaps, and that in the space of a moment, had freed them from their pain: but on account of your _favour_ and _benevolence_, it is known, that they have lingered years in pain and agony, and have been sentenced, at last, to a dreadful death for the most insignificant offence.