of the same period, some of which have been presented to the public with such high pretension, that we would choose so much to have beside us as the present. It is less loaded by tiresome and superfluous details. It is to the full as correct and indeed as philosophical as the best of them. It exhibits as com. plete a view of the chain of events, and if it affords but little assistance in directing the mind to judgment and decision, it is seldom that it presents any thing which can involve in pernicious prejudice and mistake. The style has many claims to approbation. It is neat and lively, and sometimes spirited. It is, however, very often, or rather always, careless. A little pains to ART. VII. The Private History of the Court of England. 12mo. 2 vols. enjoy the crown in perfect security, ART. VIII. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament. By THOMAS CLARKSON, M. 4. 2 vols. 8vo. THERE are many persons among us who maintain an opinion, that no progressive amelioration of mankind has hitherto taken place, and that none is to be expected here after. They hold this heart ess doctrine because they are ignorant of the past, and careless for the future; or because they find their advantage in existing abuses. Some there are, who having seen their generous hopes for the general good disappointed, have sought consolation in the belief that they ought never to have entertained them, and taking up a system more monstrous than the doctrines of the Zendavesta or of Manes, excuse the enormities of man by imputing them to the immutable order of na To this opinion, than which none can be more deadly in its effects, the history of the slave trade affords a triumphant reply. Never was the slow and certain progress of truth and humanity so triumphantly exemplified as in this great in stance. There never was a time in which some testimony was not borne against this accursed traffic in human flesh. When the introduction of negroe slaves at the West Indies was first proposed by Las Casas, Cardinal Ximenes (as we call him) rejected the proposal. Charles V. established the trade: he lived to repent of this among his other misdeeds, and made all the reparation in his power; but the evil had struck root. The question was brought before Leo X, and that pontiff declared, that not only the Christian religion, but nature herself cried out against a state of slavery. The good which any potentate can do is far from being commensurate with his power of doing mischief. When one pope divided the undiscovered parts of the world between Castile and Portugal, his division was held good: when another pronounced the sentence against the licitness of slavery, his authority was set at nought. The first Englishman who brought this guilt upon his own soul and as upon his country, was Sir John Hawkins; on his return Elizabeth expressed her fears lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent; declaring that it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers. The trade, however, was begun, and continued: and when, in the succeeding reign, the writer of Sir Thomas Roe's voyage, called the "Nations of Africa, the poor, ignorant, and most miserable negroes, born for sale, slavery, and slaughter;" such they were regarded by his countrymen without compunction. Louis XIII of France could not be persuaded to authorise the trade till he had been made to believe that the readiest way of converting the negroes, was by importing them at the colonies. It thus appears, that the pope, and the sovereigns of Spain, and England, and France, felt the iniquity of this traffic, when it was first established. Mr. Clarkson lays some stress Ирон their testimony against it, and not without reason,-for popes and princes have not been remarkable for tender consciences, and what could appear atrocious to them, must be atrocious indeed! Mr. Clarkson, after enumerating these first forerunners of the abolitionists, proceeds to enumerate those writers who, by bearing their testimony against the accursed traffick, acquitted their own souls, and prepared the public for those measures which we have had the happiness to see accomplished. In this class Mr. Granville Sharp holds a distinguished place, for he acted, as well as spoke, in favour of the oppressed; and, after repeated trials, obtained a final decision that, as soon as a slave set foot upon English ground, he became free. This ex--cellent man again came forward in 1783, upon a case of atrocity, scarcely to be paralleled in the history of the slave trade, and not and procured the attendance of a shortto be paralleled in any other. "In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, captain Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, in order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had In the been lost in a natural way. course of the trial, which afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill and likely to die, when the captain proposed to fames Kelsall, the mate, and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating "that if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship, but that, if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters." He select ed accordingly one hundred and thirtytwo of the most sickly of the slaves. Fiftyfour of these were immediately thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea; but the rest with a noble resolution would not suffer the officers to touch them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate. "The plea, which was set up in be half of this atrocious and unparalleled act of wickedness, was, that the captain discovered, when he made the proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and that he had missed hisport. It was proved, however, in answer to this, that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a shower of rain fell and continued for three days immediately after the second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their vessels with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the destruction of the third. "Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, ANN. REV, VOL. VII. hand writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as principal minister of state. No notice however was taken by any of these, of the information which had been thus sent them." The quakers, from their origin as a sect, had uniformly perceived the iniquity of this trade; their principles necessarily led them right, and their character as a body has never Their efforts belied their tenets. and their feelings were little known beyond the pale of their own society: but the cruelty of the trade was notorious, and as the progress of right feeling, like that of truth, is certain, though slow, the public mind was beginning to awake upon the subject. In 1784, Dr. Peckard expressed his abhorrence of it in a sermon, preached before the university of Cambridge, and being Vice-Chancellor in the ensuing year, he gave out the subject for the senior Bachelor's essay, Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare? Is it right to make slaves of others against their will? This circumstance became the occasion of Mr. Clarkson's labours; he had gained the first prize for the Latin Essay in the preceding year, and it was expected that he should maintain his reputation by a similar success. Upon considering the thesis he conceived it to point directly to the African slave trade; but he was ignorant of the subject, and a few weeks only were allowed for the composition. composition. A lucky advertisement led him to Anthony Benezet's Historical Account of Guinea, and in this "precious book," as he truly calls it, and as it proved to to Africa, and to Enghim, land, he found almost all that he wanted for his immediate purpose, K and reference to all the best authorities upon the subject. We must now use Mr. Clarkson's own words, in justice to him as well as to his book. "Furnished then in this manner, I began my work. But no person can tell the severe trial, which the writing of it proved to me. I had expected pleasure from the invention of the arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them together, and from the thought in the interim that I was engaged in an innocent contest for literary honour. But all my pleasure was damped by the facts which were now continually before me. It was but one gloomy subject from morning to night. In the day-time I was uneasy. In the night I had little rest. I sometimes never closed my eye-lids for grief. It became now not so much a trial for academical reputation, as for the production of a work, which might be useful to injured Africa. And keeping this idea in my mind ever after the perusal of Benezet, I always slept with a candle in my room, that I might rise out of bed and put down such thoughts as might occur to me in the night, if I judged them valuable, conceiving that no arguments of any moment should be lost in so great a cause Having at length finished this painful task I sent my Essay to the vice-chancellor, and soon afterwards found myself honoured as before with the first prize. "As it is usual to read these essays publicly in the senate-house soon after the prize is adjudged, I was called to Cambridge for this purpose. I went and performed my office. On returning however to London, the subject of it almost wholly engrossed my thoughts. I became at times very seriously affected while upon the road. I stopped my horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked. I frequently tried to persuade myself in these intervals that the contents of my Essay could not be true. The more however I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave credit. Coming in sight of Wades Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my them mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end, Agitated in this manner I reached home. This was in the summer of 1785. " sions. In the course of the autumn of the same year I experienced similar impreswoods, that I might think on the subject I walked frequently into the in solitude, and find relief to my mind there. But there the question still recurred," Are these things true?"Still the answer followed as instantaneously "They are." --- Still the result accompanied it, "Then surely some person should interfere." I then began to envy those who had seats in parliament, and who had great riches, and widely extended connections, which would enable them to take up this cause. Finding scarcely any one at that time who thought of it, I was turned frequently to myself. But here many difficulties arose. It struck me, among others, that a young man of only twenty-four years of and with age could not have that solid judgment, or knowledge of men, manners, and things, which were requisite to qualify him to undertake a task of such magnitude and importance; whom was I to unite? I believed also, that it looked so much like one of the feigned labours of Hercules, that my understanding would be suspected if I On ruminating however proposed it. on the subject, I found one thing at least practicable, and that this also was in my I could translate ny Latin dissertation. I could enlarge it usefully. power. sertation. I could enlarge it usefully. I could see how the public received it, or how far they were likely to favour any serious measures, which should have a tendency to produce the abolition of the Slave-trade. Upon this then I determined; and in the middle of the month of November 1785, I began my work." When Mr. Clarkson was half through his task, he called upon Mr. Cadell, the bookseller, to consult him concerning the publication, and was told, that as the original Essay had been honoured by the University of Cambridge with the first prize, this circumstance would ensure it a respectable circulation. But this among persons of taste. was not what the author wished, The Essay was printed. The first important friend whom it made to the cause was Bennet Langton, who had long been the author's friend: upon him it made a deep impression, and he became a zealous and active coadjutor in the work as long as he lived. Other persons were in like manner impressed by it. On a visit to Mr. Ramsay, in Kent, who had previously published upon the same subject, he was introduced to Sir Charles Middleton (now Lord Barham). Sir Charles and Lady Middleton had had their minds af. fected upon this subject by Ramsay, and it was at their table, in the joy of his heart, at finding others who sympathized with him, he exclaimed, that he was ready to devote himself to the cause. Sir Charles then offered him all the means of information, respecting Africa, which he could procure, as comptroller of the Navy, such as extracts from the journals of ships of war, &c.: and they operated as a new encouragement. "The next morning, when I awoke, one of the first things that struck me was, that I had given a pledge to the company the day before, that I would devote myself to the cause of the oppressed Africans. I became a little uneasy at this. I questioned whether I had considered matters sufficiently to be mined therefore to give the subject a full able to go so far with propriety. I deterconsideration, and accordingly I walked to the place of my usual meditations, the woods. litude, I began to balance every thing on "Having now reached a place of soboth sides of the question.-I considered first, that I had not yet obtained information sufficient on the subject, to qualify me for the undertaking of such a work. But I reflected, on the other hand, that Sir Charles Middleton had just opened to me a new source of knowledge; that I should be backed by the local information of Dillwyn and Řamsay, and that surely, by taking pains, I could acquire more. "I then considered, that I had not yet a sufficient number of friends to support me. This occasioned me to review them. I had now Sir Charles Middleton, who was in the House of Commons. I was sure of Dr. Porteus, who was in the House of Lords. I could count upon Lord Scarsdale, who was a peer also. I had secured Mr. Langton, who had a most extensive acquaintance with members of both houses of the legislature. I had also secured Dr. Baker, who had similar connections. I could depend upon Granville Sharp, James Phillips, Richard Phillips, Ramsay, Dillwyn, and the little committee to which he belonged, as well as the whole society of the Quakers. I thought therefore, upon the whole, that, considering the short time I had been at work, I was well off with respect to support. I believed also that there were still several of my own acquaintance, whom I could interest in the question, and I did not doubt that, by exerting myself diligently, persons, who were |