Edmund Burke, in his account of the European settlements, (for this work is usually attributed to him,) complains “that the Negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer, in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time.  Proofs of this are not wanting.  The prodigious waste, which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth.”  And he goes on to advise the planters, for the sake of their own interest, to behave like good men, good masters, and good Christians, and to impose less labour upon their slaves, and to give them recreation on some of the grand festivals, and to instruct them in religion, as certain preventives of their decrease.

An anonymous author of a pamphlet, entitled, An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America, seems to have come forward next.  Speaking of slavery there, he says, “It is shocking to humanity, violative of every generous sentiment, abhorrent utterly from the Christian religion.—­There cannot be a more dangerous maxim than that necessity is a plea for injustice, for who shall fix the degree of this necessity?  What villain so atrocious, who may not urge this excuse, or, as Milton has happily expressed it,

  And with necessity,
  The tyrant’s plea, excuse his devilish deed?

“That our colonies,” he continues, “want people, is a very weak argument for so inhuman a violation of justice.—­Shall a civilized, a Christian nation encourage slavery, because the barbarous, savage, lawless African hath done it?  To what end do we profess a religion whose dictates we so flagrantly violate?  Wherefore have we that pattern of goodness and humanity, if we refuse to follow it?  How long shall we continue a practice which policy rejects, justice condemns, and piety revolts at?”

The poet Shenstone, who comes next in order, seems to have written an elegy on purpose to stigmatize this trade.  Of this elegy I shall copy only the following parts:—­

  See the poor native quit the Libyan shores,
  Ah! not in love’s delightful fetters bound! 
  No radiant smile his dying peace restores,
  No love, nor fame, nor friendship, heals his wound.

  Let vacant bards display their boasted woes;
  Shall I the mockery of grief display? 
  No; let the muse his piercing pangs disclose,
  Who bleeds and weeps his sum of life away!

  On the wild heath in mournful guise he stood,
  Ere the shrill boatswain gave the hated sign;
  He dropt a tear unseen into the flood,
  He stole one secret moment to repine—­

  “Why am I ravish’d from my native strand? 
  What savage race protects this impious gain? 
  Shall foreign plagues infest this teeming land,
  And more than sea-born monsters plough the main?