He had shown also last year, that kings were induced to seize and sell their subjects, and individuals each other, in consequence of the existence of the Slave-trade.

He had shown also, that the administration of justice was perverted, so as to become a fertile source of supply to this inhuman traffic; that every crime was punished by slavery; that false accusations were made, to procure convicts; and that even the judges had a profit on the convictions.

He had shown again, that many acts of violence were perpetrated by the Europeans themselves.  But he would now relate others, which had happened since.  The captain of an English vessel, lying in the river Cameroons, sent his boat with three sailors and a slave to get water.  A Black trader seized the latter, and took him away.  He alleged in his defence, that the captain owed him goods to a greater amount than the value of the slave; and that he would not pay him.

This being told on board, the captain, and a part of his crew, who were compelled to blacken their naked bodies that they might appear like the natives, went on shore at midnight, armed with muskets and cutlasses.  They fired on the trader’s dwelling, and killed three of his children on the spot.  The trader, being badly wounded, died while they were dragging him to the boat; and his wife, being wounded also, died in half an hour after she was on board the ship.  Resistance having been made to these violent proceedings, some of the sailors were wounded, and one was killed.  Some weeks after this affray, a chieftain of the name of Quarmo went on board the same vessel to borrow some cutlasses and muskets.  He was going, he said, into the country to make war; and the captain should have half of his booty.  So well understood were the practices of the trade, that his request was granted.  Quarmo, however, and his associates, finding things favourable to their design, suddenly seized the captain, threw him overboard, hauled him into their canoe, and dragged him to the shore; where another party of the natives, lying in ambush, seized such of the crew as were absent from the ship.  But how did these savages behave, when they had these different persons in their power?  Did they not instantly retaliate by murdering them all?  No—­they only obliged the captain to give an order on the vessel to pay his debts.  This fact came out only two months ago in a trial in the court of common pleas—­not in a trial for piracy and murder—­but in the trial of a civil suit, instituted by some of the poor sailors, to whom the owners refused their wages, because the natives, on account of the villanous conduct of their captain, had kept them from their vessel by detaining them as prisoners on shore.  This instance, he said, proved the dreadful nature of the Slave-trade, its cruelty, its perfidy, and its effect on the Africans as well as on the Europeans, who carried it on.  The cool manner, in which the transaction was conducted on both sides, showed that these practices were not novel.  It showed also the manner of doing business in the trade.  It must be remembered too, that these transactions were carrying on at the very time when the inquiry concerning this trade was going forward in Parliament, and whilst the witnesses of his opponents were strenuously denying not only the actual, but the possible, existence of any such depredations.