We submit to the amputation of a limb for the sake of life ; we hang a man for the benefit of society; we remit punishment, for the sake of truth, when evidence is furnished against accomplices. The appliances for obtaining and rendering justice must be coincident with its demands. When bad men conspire, good men must combine. For national crimes there must be national remedies. Those nations that dare the world’s scorn deserve the world’s execration, and when humanity bleeds it behoves the humane to act with energy. The slave-trade is now indelibly branded by civilized Europe as infamous in those nations that allow it, iniquitous towards man, and a wicked defiance of the Almighty.
There are no guilty deeds without guilty men. The hardened piratical crew of a slaver are not the only sinners, nor indeed the chief sinners. The breeders and owners of slaves; the builders, owners, and equippers of slave-ships; the rascal dealers in our race, the bargainers for blood upon the coast, the marketing buyers in America, Cuba, Brazil; the inhuman taskmasters in each exacting, not only sweat from the brow, but blood from the flesh. These are the beings that Europe execrates.
When the confirmed scoundrel and the young confederate are caught, and brought to prison, the older and inciting party receives the greater punishment.
The sailor in a slave-ship is not so criminal as the owner of the cargo and owner of the ship. Though working in such an iniquitous traffic, he is innocent when compared with his masters and the capitalists who employ him for their iniquitous gain. He seeks bread—his employers gold, through the sacrifice of blood.
The sailors now employed in that trade feel that they are in a desperate course; many of them, if they could and had the inducement, would quit it to-morrow. The question is, can it be managed? Can the inducement be offered?
To the first question the answer is, every British port in the British colonies offers an asylum for any kidnapped African, and restores to him his natural freedom; and it may be hoped that, ere long, all other countries, not excepting those who still uphold slavery, will also become such asylums.
Can an inducement be offered for the crews of these slave-ships to carry the slaves into one of these ports, instead of taking them to countries where they would be bought and sold as slaves? If the different colonies can now subscribe to pay the passages for free immigrants, and of free negroes to the colonies, it would answer their purpose quite as well to subscribe to meet a reasonable gratuity to the crews of slavers, and accomplish thereby the noblest work—the freedom of the captives.
The cry from the colonies is for free combined labour, because the manumitted blacks work now mostly for their own account, and chiefly in occupations hitherto neglected. Free emigration cannot be resorted to in any sufficient degree from Europe to tropical climes, nor is it desirable; and spontaneous emigration from Africa is prevented by the convulsions in which that continent is kept through the slave-trade.
Now, if we combine a remedy for the honest demands and necessities of a drooping agriculture, and, at the same time, apply a final cure to the evils of Africa; and if the interest of humanity can be combined with those of the planters, not only of the West Indian, but the real and true interests of the very shareholders of Brazil and Cuba, whose existence is periled, by their own showing, by further importation of slaves, why should we hesitate to do it?
By these means self-interest would be made to act as a useful assistant in the cause of humanity. The greater risk for the owners of slave-trading vessels to lose their property by the turning of their crews against them, would deter them from embarking in such hazardous speculations, and the temptations of a pecuniary reward would act as a stimulus to these crews to bring their cargo to such ports, where they can rely upon a premium for so doing.
If such a device were acted upon, all tropical countries in want of African free labour, and all those sincerely desirous of doing away with the slave-trade, now a hundred times more cruel and destructive than in past centuries, would probably subscribe or vote an amount for so valuable an importation of labour secured by such means.
The countries wishing to protect themselves against any further importation of slaves would co-operate, and countless philanthropists all over the world will contribute their mites of contributions towards a fund to be employed in sufficient remunerations to said crews.
The vessels to be abandoned, or to be given up to the lawful (?) owners, in any manner consistent with the law which the funds of the subscribers will test.
Let, therefore, meetings of private individuals forthwith take place here and in the islands; let a purse be made up; and let the notices of premium be circulated on the coast of Africa, and among the sailors of Havannah and Brazil; and let an authorized individual or body, as the representatives of the subscribers to the fund, issue his or their engagement for the faithful performance of these terms on the surrender of the ship and landing of the passengers, and the slave-trade will surely cease.— Correspondent of the Sun.
The Illustrated London News, London, England, Week Ending May 14, 1842