But he would now have recourse for a moment to circumstantial evidence.  An adverse witness, who had lived on the Gold Coast, had said that the only way, in which children could be enslaved, was by whole families being sold when the principals had been condemned for witchcraft.  But he said at the same time, that few were convicted of this crime, and that the younger part of a family in these cases was sometimes spared.  But if this account were true, it would follow that the children in the slave-vessels would be few indeed.  But it had been proved, that the usual proportion of these was never less than a fourth of the whole cargo on that coast, and also, that the kidnapping of children was very prevalent there.

All these atrocities, he said, were fully substantiated by the evidence; and here he should do injustice to his cause, if he were not to make a quotation from the speech of Mr. B. Edwards in the Assembly of Jamaica, who, though he was hostile to his propositions, had yet the candour to deliver himself in the following manner there.  “I am persuaded,” says he, “that Mr. Wilberforce has been rightly informed as to the manner in which slaves are generally procured.  The intelligence I have collected from my own Negros abundantly confirms his account; and I have not the smallest doubt, that in Africa the effects of this trade are precisely such as he has represented them.  The whole, or the greatest part, of that immense continent is a field of warfare and desolation; a wilderness, in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other.  That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the Slave-trade, I dare not dispute.  Every man in the Sugar Islands may be convinced that it is so, who will inquire of any African Negros, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity.  The assertion that it is otherwise, is mockery and insult.”

But it was not only by acts of outrage that the Africans were brought into bondage.  The very administration of justice was turned into an engine for that end.  The smallest offence was punished by a fine equal to the value of a slave.  Crimes were also fabricated; false accusations were resorted to; and persons were sometimes employed to seduce the unwary into practices with a view to the conviction and the sale of them.

It was another effect of this trade, that it corrupted the morals of those, who carried it on.  Every fraud was used to deceive the ignorance of the natives by false weights and measures, adulterated commodities, and other impositions of a like sort.  These frauds were even acknowledged by many, who had themselves practised them in obedience to the orders of their superiors.  For the honour of the mercantile character of the country, such a traffic ought immediately to be suppressed.