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FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 043:  Jure Gentium servi nostri sunt, qui ab hostibus capiuntur.  Justinian, L. 1. 5. 5. 1.]

[Footnote 044:  Serverum appellatio ex eo fluxit, quod imperatores nostri captivos vendere, ac per hoc servare, nec occidere solent.]

[Footnote 045:  Nam sive victoribus jure captivitatis servissent, &c.  Justin, L. 4. 3. et passim apud scriptores antiquos.]

[Footnote 046:  Neque est contra naturam spoliare eum, si possis, quem honestum est necare.  Cicero de officiis.  L. 3. 6.]

[Footnote 047:  1.  Ut liberi suis legibus viverent.  Livy, L. 30. 37. 2.  Decem millia talentum argenti descripta pensionibus aequis in annos quinquaginta solverent.  Ibid. 3.  Et naves rostratas, praeter decem triremes, traderent, elephantosque, quos haberent domitos; neque domarent alios; Bellum neve in Africa, neve extra Africam, injussu P. R. gererent, &c.  Ibid.]

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CHAP.  VIII.

We shall beg leave, before we proceed to the arguments of the purchasers, to add the following observations to the substance of the three preceding chapters.

As the two orders of men, of those who are privately kidnapped by individuals, and of those who are publickly seized by virtue of the authority of their prince, compose together, at least[048], nine tenths of the African slaves, they cannot contain, upon a moderate computation, less than ninety thousand men annually transported:  an immense number, but easily to be credited, when we reflect that thousands are employed for the purpose of stealing the unwary, and that these diabolical practices are in force, so far has European injustice been spread, at the distance of a thousand miles from the factories on the coast.  The slave merchants, among whom a quantity of European goods is previously divided, travel into the heart of the country to this amazing distance.  Some of them attend the various markets, that are established through so large an extent of territory, to purchase the kidnapped people, whom the slave-hunters are continually bringing in; while the rest, subdividing their merchandize among the petty sovereigns with whom they deal, receive, by an immediate exertion of fraud and violence, the stipulated number.

Now, will any man assert, in opposition to the arguments before advanced, that out of this immense body of men, thus annually collected and transported, there is even one, over whom the original or subsequent seller can have any power or right?  Whoever asserts this, in the first instance, must, contradict his own feelings, and must consider himself as a just object of prey, whenever any daring invader shall think it proper to attack him.  And, in the second instance, the very idea which the African princes entertain of their villages, as parks or reservoirs, stocked only for their own convenience, and of their subjects, as wild beasts, whom they may pursue and take at pleasure, is so shocking, that it need only be mentioned, to be instantly reprobated by the reader.