[Footnote 031:  We would not wish to be understood, that slavery was unknown in Africa before the piratical expeditions of the Portuguese, as it appears from the Nubian’s Geography, that both the slavery and commerce had been established among the natives with one another.  We mean only to assert, that the Portuguese were the first of the Europeans, who made their piratical expeditions, and shewed the way to that slavery, which now makes so disgraceful a figure in the western colonies of the Europeans.  In the term “Europeans,” wherever it shall occur in the remaining part of this first dissertation, we include the Portuguese, and those nations only, who followed their example.]

[Footnote 032:  The Portuguese erected their first fort at D’Elmina, in the year 1481, about forty years after Alonzo Gonzales had pointed the Southern Africans out to his countrymen as articles of commerce.]

[Footnote 033:  In the ancient servitude, we reckoned convicts among the voluntary slaves, because they had it in their power, by a virtuous conduct, to have avoided so melancholy a situation; in the African, we include them in the involuntary, because, as virtues are frequently construed into crimes, from the venal motives of the traffick, no person whatever possesses such a power or choice.]

[Footnote 034:  Andrew Sparrman, M.D. professor of Physick at Stockholm, fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Sweden, and inspector of its cabinet of natural history, whose voyage was translated into English, and published in 1785.]

[Footnote 035:  Boshies-man, or wild Hottentot.]

* * * * *

End of the First Part.

* * * * *

PART II.

THE AFRICAN COMMERCE,

OR

SLAVE TRADE.

* * * * *

CHAP.  I.

As we explained the History of Slavery in the first part of this Essay, as far as it was necessary for our purpose, we shall now take the question into consideration, which we proposed at first as the subject of our inquiry, viz. how far the commerce and slavery of the human species, as revived by some of the nations of Europe in the persons of the unfortunate Africans, and as revived, in a great measure, on the principles of antiquity, are consistent with the laws of nature, or the common notions of equity, as established among men.