Anthony Benezet

“ How dreadful then is this Slave-Trade, whereby so many thousands of our fellow-creatures, free by nature, endued with the same rational faculties, and called to be heirs of the same salvation with us, lose their lives, and are truly, and properly speaking, murdered every year! For it is not necessary, in order to convict a man of murder, to make it appear, that he had an intention to commit murder. Whoever does, by unjust force or violence, deprive another of his Liberty ”

“ When, and how, have these oppressed people forfeited their liberty? Does not justice loudly call for its being restored to them? Have they not the same right to demand it, as any of us should have, if we had been violently snatched by pirates from our native land? Is it not the duty of every dispenser of justice, who is not forgetful of his own humanity, to remember that these are men, and to declare them free? Where instances of such cruelty frequently occur, and are neither enquired into, nor redressed, by those whose duty it is to seek judgment, and relieve the oppressed, Isaiah i. ”

“ In the present war, how many of our poor Country Men are dragged to Bondage and sold for Slaves; how many mourn, a Husband, a Wife, a Child, a Parent or some near Relation taken from them; and were we to follow them a little farther, and see them exposed to sale and bough up to be made a Gain of, what Heart so hard that would not melt with Sympathy and Sorrow: And could we hear the Purchasers, for the take of Gain, pushing on the Savages to captivate our People, what inhuman Wretches should we call them, what Punishment should we think their Guilt deserved! ”

“ They won't allow them to have any claim to human privileges, or scarce, indeed, to be regarded as the work of God. Tho' it was consistent with the justice of our Maker to pronounce the sentence on our common parent, and thro' him on all succeeding generations, That he and they should eat their bread by the sweat of their brow; yet, does it not stand recorded by the same eternal truth, That the Labourer is worthy of his hire? It cannot be allowed in natural justice that there should be a servitude without condition: A cruel endless servitude. ”

“ Now, as freedom is unquestionably the birth-right of all mankind, Africans as well as Europeans, to keep the former in a state of slavery, is a constant violation of that right, and therefore of justice.
The ground on which the civilians who favour slavery, admit it to be just, namely, consent, force, and birth, is totally disputable; for surely a man's own will and consent cannot be allowed to introduce so important an innovation into society, as slavery, or to make himself an outlaw, which is really the state of a slave ”

“ Besides, no man has a right to acquire or to purchase them; men and their Liberty are not either saleable or purchasable, one therefore has no body but himself to blame, in case he shall find himself deprived of a man, whom he thought he had, by buying for a price, made his own; for he dealt in a trade which was illicit, and was prohibited by the most obvious dictates of humanity. For these reasons, every one of those unfortunate men, who are pretended to be slaves, has a right to be declared to be free, for he never loft his Liberty, he could not lose it ”

“ OH my friends! a careless life, unconcern’d and unattentive to the duties of Religion, is so without all excuse, so unworthy of the mercy of God, such a shame to the sense and reason of out minds, that I can hardly conceive a greater punishment, than for a man to be thrown into the state that I am in, to reflect. ”

“ Let the hardiest slave-holder look forward to that tremendous day, when he must give an account to God of his stewardship; and let him seriously consider, whether, at such a time, he thinks he shall be able to satisfy himself, that any act of buying and selling, or the fate of war, or the birth of children in his house, plantation, or territories, or any other circumstance whatever, can give him such an absolute property in the persons of men, as will justify his retaining them as slaves, and treating them as beasts? ”

“ I fear the generality of you, that own Negroes, are liable to such a charge; for your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride. These, after they have done their work, are fed and taken proper care of; but many Negroes, when wearied with labour, in your plantations, have been obliged to grind their own corn, after they return home; your dogs are caressed and fondled at your tables; but your slaves, who are frequently stiled dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege; they are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their master's table. ”

“ Since our English law is so truly valuable for its justice, how can they overlook these barbarous deaths of the unhappy Africans without trial, or due proof of their being guilty, of crimes adequate to their punishment? Why are those masters of vessels, (who are often not the most tender and considerate of men) thus suffered to be the sovereign arbiters of the lives of the miserable Negroes, and allowed, with impunity, thus to destroy, may I not say, murder28 their fellow-creatures, and that by means so cruel as cannot be even related but with shame and horror? ”

“ THE greatness of those things which follow death, makes all that goes before it, sink into nothing.
NOW that judgment is the next thing that I look for, and everlasting happiness or misery is come so near me, all the enjoyments and prosperities of life seem as vain and insignificant, and to have no more to do with my happiness, than the cloaths that i wore before I could speak. ”

“ But it is false, that either we or our colonies would be ruined by the abolition of slavery. It might occasion a stagnation of business for a short time. Every great alteration produces that effect; because mankind cannot, on a sudden, find ways of disposing of themselves, and of their affairs; but it would produce many happy effects. It is the slavery which is permitted in America, that has hindered it from becoming so soon populous as it would otherwise have done. Let the Negroes be free, and, in a few generations, this vast and fertile continent would be crowded with inhabitants ”

“ The gospel expressly declares, that thieves and murderers shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Consider, that at the fame time, and by the same means, you now treasure up worldly riches, you are treasuring up to yourselves wrath, against the day of wrath, and vengeance that shall come upon the workers of iniquity, unless prevented by a timely repentance. And what greater iniquity, what crime that is more heinous, that carries in it more complicated guilt, can you name than that, in the habitual, deliberate practice of which you now live? ”

“ The Author of a pamphlet, lately printed in London, entituled, An Essay in Vindication of the continental Colonies of America, writes, ‘That the bondage we have imposed on the Africans, is absolutely repugnant to justice.32 That it is highly inconsistent with civil policy: First, as it tends to suppress all improvements in arts and sciences; without which it is morally impossible that any nation should be happy or powerful. Secondly, as it may deprave the minds of the freemen; steeling their hearts against the laudable feelings of virtue and humanity. ”

“ This was the State of the Negro Trade when Bosman wrote his Account of Guinea, which, as I have already said, was more than fifty Years ago; since that Time the Trade is prodigiously augmented, there being now more than ten Ships to one that was then imployed in it; and as the Demand for Slaves has augmented, so have the Negroes been the more induced not only to wage War one with another, but also to put in practice the most base and inhuman Methods, in Order to get their unhappy Countrymen into their Power, that they may sell them to the European Traders. ”

“ Now that the life of a man should be so lightly valued, as that fifteen pounds should be judged a sufficient indemnification of the murder of one, even when it is avowedly done wilfully, wantonly, cruelly, or of bloody-mindedness, is a tyranny hardly to be paralleled: nevertheless human laws cannot make void the righteous law of God, or prevent the inquisition of that awful judgment day, when, "at the hand of every man's brother the life of man shall be required." By the law of South Carolina, the person that killeth a Negroe is only subject to a fine, or twelve months imprisonment. ”

“ However, I shall still have the satisfaction, of having entered my private protest against a practice which, in my opinion, bids that God, who is the God and Father of the gentiles, unconverted to Christianity, most daring and bold defiance, and spurns at all the principles, both of natural and revealed religion. How the British nation first came to be concerned in a practice, by which the rights and liberties of mankind are so violently infringed, and which is so opposite to the apprehensions Englishmen have always had of what natural justice requires, is indeed surprising. ”

“ Can any, whose mind is not rendered quite obdurate by the love of wealth, hear these relations, without being deeply touched with sympathy and sorrow? And doubtless the case of many, very many of these afflicted people, upon enquiry, would be found to be attended with circumstances equally tragical and aggravating. And if we enquire of those Negroes, who were brought away from their native country when children, we shall find most of them to have been stolen away, when abroad from their parents, on the roads, in the woods, or watching their corn-fields. ”