spot, where the victors having followed the vanquished into the water, were continually dragging out and murdering those, whom by reason of their wounds they easily overtook.  The very children, whom they took in great numbers, did not escape the massacre.  Enraged at their barbarity, we fired our guns loaden with grape shot, and a volley of small arms among them, which effectually checked their ardour, and obliged them to retire to a distance from the shore; from whence a few round cannon shot soon removed them into the woods.  The whole river was black over with the heads of the fugitives, who were swimming for their lives.  These poor wretches, fearing us as much as their conquerors, dived when we fired, and cried most lamentably for mercy.  Having now effectually favoured their retreat, we stood backwards and forwards, and took up several that were wounded and tired.  All whose wounds had disabled them from swimming, were either butchered or drowned, before we got up to them.  With a justice and generosity, never I believe before heard of among slavers, we gave those their liberty whom we had taken up, setting them on shore on the Barbary side, among the poor residue of their companions, who had survived the slaughter of the morning.”

We shall make but two remarks on this horrid instance of African cruelty.  It adds, first, a considerable weight to the statements that have been made; and confirms, secondly, the conclusions that were drawn in the preceding chapter.  For if we even allow the right of capture to be just, and the principles of reparation and punishment to be applicable to the individuals of a community, yet would the former be unjust, and the latter inapplicable, in the present case.  Every African war is a robbery; and we may add, to our former expression, when we said, “that thus have many thousands of men, in the most iniquitous manner, been sent into servitude,” that we believe there are few of this order, who are not as much the examples of injustice, as the people that have been kidnapped; and who do not additionally convey, when we consider them as prisoners of war, an idea of the most complicated scene of murder.

The order of convicts, as it exists almost solely among those princes, whose dominions are contiguous to the European factories, is from this circumstance so inconsiderable, when compared with either of the preceding, that we should not have mentioned it again, but that we were unwilling to omit any additional argument that occurred against it.

It has been shewn already, that the punishment of slavery is inflicted from no other motive, than that of gratifying the avarice of the prince, a confederation so detestable, as to be sufficient of itself to prove it to be unjust; and that it is so disproportionate, from its nature, to the offence, as to afford an additional proof of its injustice.  We shall add now, as a second argument, its disproportion from its continuance: and we shall derive a third from the consideration, that, in civil society, every violation of the laws of the community is an offence against the state[050].