Antidote To The Slave Trade
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.