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LESSON XXXV.

Extract from a Parallel between Intemperance and the
Slave Trade.-HUMPHREY.

THE bare mention of the slave trade, is enough to excite indignation and horrour, in every breast that is not twice dead to humanity. Any thing short of these emotions, would be counted disgraceful in the last degree to an American citizen. The wretch who should be accessary to a foreign traffic in human flesh and sinews and torment, would be branded with eternal infamy, if not hunted as a monster from the face of civilized society. I would set the mark of Cain upon such a reprobate if I could, and so would every one that hears me. And yet, intemperance is worse than the slave-trade-is heavier with wo and guilt and death-both being "laid in the balances together."

The principal ingredients of suffering and crime in the slave-trade, are the infernal ambush—the midnight attack and conflagration of peaceful villages-the massacre of helpless age and imploring infancy-the stripes and manacles and thousand unutterable cruelties inflicted between the place of capture and embarcation-the horrors of the middle passage-the shambles prepared for the faminestricken survivors on a foreign shore-the separation of husbands and wives, mothers and children, under the hammer and branding-iron-the mortality of seasoning, amid stripes and hunger and malaria :-to which must be added the dreadful accumulation of heart-breaking remembrances and forebodings, incident to a state of hopeless bondage in a strange and hated land.

Nor even is this all. The wrongs and miseries of that accursed traffic, which once disgraced our own country, did not cease with the lives of its immediate victims. Servitude was entailed upon unknown generations of their posterity; and last, though not least, who can tell what dangers now hang over us, in the heaving bosom of that spreading cloud which darkens half the land?

And can any thing, you will ask, be worse? Can any guilt, or misery, or peril surpass that of the slave-trade? Can any national stigma be deeper, than for a single year

to have tolerated the importation of human blood and broken hearts and daily imprecations?

Yes, I answer, intemperance in the United States is worse than all this-is a more blighting and deadly scourge to humanity, than that traffic, all dripping with gore, which it makes every muscle shudder to think of. I am well aware that so heavy a charge against a great and professedly christian people, requires strong proofs; and I shall leave the appeal with you, whether such proofs are not found in the following parallel.

First; let us look at the comparative aggregate of misery, occasioned by the slave trade on the one hand, and intemperate drinking on the other. The result of this comparison will obviously depend upon the number of victims to each, the variety, intensity and duration of their sufferings, bodily and mental; together with the degree and extent to which their friends and relations are made to suffer on their account.

I am aware, that the parallel does not admit of mathematical precision; neither does the nature of the argument require it. We every hour decide that one man is older and taller than another, or more guilty or more miserable, without thinking it at all necessary to determine exactly how much. So in this case, without pretending to compare numbers and degrees precisely, we may come to an equally satisfactory conclusion.

To begin then, with the number of victims on both sides, as nearly as it can be ascertained. According to Mr. Clarkson, and other good authorities, not far from 100,000 slaves have been shipped from the coast of Africa in a single year. This was the estimate for 1786; and of these, about 42,000 were transported in British vessels. The period in question, however, was one, of the most afflictive and disgraceful activity, when the English, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Danes, seemed most eagerly to vie with each other in driving the infernal traffic.

Probably, the average shipment of slaves for twenty years, immediately preceding the act of abolition by the British Parliament, may have ranged from seventy, to seventy-five thousand. What proportion fell to our share, it is difficult, perhaps impossible to determine. But when it is considered, that the great markets of Cuba, St. Domingo,

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Jamaica, and many other islands, (to say nothing of Mexico and South America,) were at the same time to be supplied, we can hardly suppose that more than 25,000 were consigned to the United States.

My own belief is, that the average did not exceed 20,000; but to make the case as strong as it will bear, against the slave trade, let the number be raised to 30,000; that is, let us suppose that nearly half of those human cargoes were sent to our ports ;-making an aggregate of 150,000 in five years, or 300,000 in ten years. What a multitude of men, women and children, to go into captivity and wear the yoke of slavery forever!

But we must follow these miserable beings a step further, and enquire for them in the bills of mortality. According to the most authentic estimates which I have been able to find, the number of deaths during the middle passage, varies from six to fifteen per cent. In some

extraordinary cases it has gone up to thirty, or even higher. But the average, taking one year with another, may be put down at ten, or twelve deaths in a hundred, before the slaves reach the great shambles, to which like beasts of burthen they are consigned.

I speak here of the trade, not as it existed fifty years ago, when it was as legal as any other, but as it is now carried on, in spite of the laws, and in defiance of the most solemn compacts and treaties, which renders it far more cruel and destructive. But of this difference, I shall take no advantage in the present argument. Let the painful supposition stand, that our share in the infamous traffick, cost from three to four thousand lives annually, in the middle passage, and from eight to ten thousand more, in the two first years of servitude. This indeed must have been, considering the cause of it, a most horrible mortality. From ten to fifteen thousand human beings, sacrificed every year, to the cupidity of our merchants and planters!

But let us inquire, whether at least as many thousands are not now enslaved and destroyed, by a more ruthless enemy of happiness and of life. According to the recent calculations of Mr. Palfrey and others, which I believe an exact census would more than verify, thirty six thousand new victims are yearly snared and taken and enslaved by strong drink. For thirty-six thousand perish by the hand

of this fell destroyer, and of course, it requires an equal number of fresh recruits to keep the ranks of intemperance full, and the drunkard's knell still sounding through the land.

The parallel, then, as nearly as it can be ascertained, stands thus. Shipment of slaves, say in 1786, from twenty-five to thirty thousand. Brought into a worse bondage by intemperance, in 1828, thirty-six thousand. Deaths by the slave-trade, from ten to fifteen thousand-by ardent spirits, thirty-six thousand! Thus it appears, that where the slave-trade opened one grave, hard drinking opens three.

Again; as intemperance holds this "bad pre-eminence" over the slave-trade in point of numbers, so I am persuaded it does in the aggregate of human misery which it inflicts. The full amount of suffering, indeed, which is caused by the trade in human blood, it is impossible to estimate, and I hope to convince you, if I have not already, that you cannot abhor it more than I do.

Go then with me to that long abused continent, where the first act of this infernal tragedy is acted over every month, and you will gain some faint idea of the atrocities which it unfolds. In that thicket crouches a human tyger; and just beyond it, you hear the joyous voices of children at their sports. The next moment he springs upon his terrified prey, nor sister nor mother shall ever see them more.

On the right hand, you hear the moans of the captive as he goes bleeding to his doom; and on the left, a peaceful village, all at once flashes horrour upon the face of midnight; and as you approach the scene of conflagration you behold the sick, the aged and the infant, either writhing in the fire where they lie down, unconscious of danger, or if attempting to escape, you see them forced back into the flames, as not worth the trouble of driving to market.

And then, Oh what shrieks from the bursting hearts of the more unhappy survivors! What agonies in the rending of every tie! What lacerations, what fainting, what despair wait on every step, and afflict the heavens which light them on their way to bondage! How many would die if they could, before they have been an hour in the hands of those incarnate dæmons, who are hurrying them away!

LESSON XXXVI.

Another Extract from the Same.

SHALL I attempt to describe the horrors of the middle passage the miseries which await these wretched beings in crossing the ocean? I have no pencil, nor colours for such a picture. But see them literally packed alive by hundreds in a floating and pestilential dungeon-manacled to the very bone, under a treble-ironed hatchwaytormented with thirst and devoured by hunger-suffocated in their own breath-chained to corpses, and maddened by despair, to the rending of all their heart-strings.

See mothers and young girls, and even little children, watching their opportunity to seek refuge in the caverns of the deep, from the power of their tormentors; and not to be diverted from their purpose, by the hanging and shooting of such as have failed in similar attempts. Behold the sick and the blind struggling amid the waves, into which avarice has cast them; and shrieking in the jaws of the shark, for the unpardonable crime of having sunk under their tortures, and lost their marketable value on the voyage. See them headed up in water casks and thrown into the sea, lest they should be found and liberated by the merciful cruiser.

The foregoing is a mere extract from the blood-stained records of the slave-trade. Who then will undertake to sum up the amount of human misery which is wafted by the reluctant and wailing winds upon the complaining waters, to be chained and scourged, to pine and die in the great western house of bondage?

But while intemperance mixes ingredients equally bitter, if not similar, in the cup of trembling and wo which it fills up to the brim, it casts in others, which the slave-trade never mingled-for it fetters the immortal mind as well as the dying body. It not only blisters the skin, but scorches the vitals. While it scourges the flesh, it tortures the conscience.

While it cripples the wretch in every limb, and boils away his blood and ossifies its channels, and throws every nerve into a dying tremour, it also goes down into the unsounded depths of human depravity, and not only

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