Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 | Page 4

from the
tyrannical holders of the soil; and, at the same time, this very body of
priests does not scruple to receive the money of American
slave-holders, to build and endow these self-same churches? Such
incredible inconsistency makes one sick at heart, and inclined to
question the existence of Christian feelings in the professors and
teachers of Christianity!
It is deeply to be deplored that our Anti-Slavery Society confines itself
so much to protests, and what it calls "the moral principle." No people
of the world has done more for the liberties of Africa than the Society
of Friends in England, and no people more admirably exemplify in
their conduct the humane and pacific morals of Christianity. But when
the Founder of our religion resisted his enemies by the remonstrance,
"Why strikest thou me?" something more was meant than a protest. We
have had lately a triste example of the end of protests in a neighbouring
country. The annual protest of the French Chamber of Deputies against
the extinction of the nationality of Poland, not only ended in barren
results, and excited public ridicule, but actually terminated in the

triumph of the nefarious scheme against which it was made. Never was
a country so humiliated as France in this case!--Its Chief, the Sovereign
of its choice, consenting at the time, to the damning act of the
extinction of Polish nationality, for the sake of accomplishing a low
and scandalous family intrigue in Spain! This was something more than
ridiculous, and is one of the many infamies of our age, perpetrated on
so large a scale. Now, I do not assert, that the protests of the
Anti-Slavery Society will end in the re-enactment of the Slave-Trade
by the British Parliament. But the last and present Sessions of Imperial
Parliament, show symptoms of our country abandoning Africa, after
the labours of half a century, to all the horrors of the Slave-Trade. Mr.
P. Borthwick and Mr. Hume, more especially the latter, pleaded, in
conjunction with others, during last Session, for the withdrawal of the
British cruisers from off the Western Coast of Africa, and free trade in
emigration, if not in slaves. In this good work, of course, they have the
sympathies of the Anti-Slavery Free Trading League. Some of our
journals opine, in their late articles, that a change has come over the
spirit of our abolition dream, and suggest that the clerk, in charge of the
Anti-Slavery Papers at the Foreign Office, is an old antiquated,
superannuated being. In a word, these journals and Mr. Hume's
pro-slavery clique, see no reason why Great Britain should not exhibit
to this and succeeding ages, the most dreadful bad faith in the case of
British abolition. They would have us say to the world:--"All our
Anti-Slavery efforts, our Parliamentary enactments against Slavery, our
huge blue books of published Anti-Slavery papers, our protocols and
treaties with Foreign Powers, all, each, and singular, are one grand
organized system of selfishness and hypocrisy." I know very well that,
in general, foreigners give us no credit whatever for our anti-slavery
feelings and public acts for the suppression of the Slave-Trade. This
they have reiterated in my ears. And, how can they give us credit for
sincerity in abolition, when our public men and public writers call for
something like the re-enactment of the British Slave-Trade?--and,
whilst our quondam champions of Free Churches receive the
blood-stained money of slave-labour to build up their new
ecclesiastical establishments? Mankind reason from actions, and not
from verbal or written declarations. Our Act of Abolition, and the
famous twenty millions, are not such wonderful things after all, when

we owed a hundred millions to the descendants of our slaves. We were
also nearly half a century in abolishing the traffic, after it had been
denounced as robbery and murder by our highest and greatest
statesmen, Pitt and Fox[3]. This slowness of our work has given the cue
to the suspicions of our national enemies; and, certainly, to use a gross
vulgarism, has "taken out the shine," or very much dimmed the lustre
of this great act of justice to the African race.
Here I cannot restrain myself from giving a word of caution to the
working-classes of our country, to those more especially who head the
new "National Society," and form other and similar leagues. You say
the politicians of the Anti-Corn Law League are your men; you adore
your Humes, and Duncombes, and Wakleys. You, English democrats,
or reformers, as you may call yourselves, admire the self-government
and cheap government of the Transatlantic Model Republic. You do
well. But now read some of their latest handiworks, without note or
comment on my part. The violent impulse given to the Slave-Trade in
Cuba and the Brazils--the advocacy of a free trade in Slaves by