Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800, page 69 by George Buchanan
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se of rapine and bloodshed in Greece and Rome: there it was an established custom to subject to slavery all the captives in time of war; and not only the Emperors, but the nobility, were in possession of thousands--to them they served as instruments of diversion and authority.
To give an idea only of the amphitheatrical entertainments, so repugnant to humanity, would make the most obdurate heart feel with keen sensibility. For to hear with patience of voracious animals being turned loose among human beings, to give sport to the rich and great, when upon reflection, he may be assured, that the merciless jaw knew no restraint but precipitately charged upon its prey whom it left, without remorse, either massacred or maimed.
Such was the practice among the ancients, and to charge the modern with like enormities, would by many be deemed criminal.
But I fear not to accuse them--the prosecution of the present barbarous and iniquitous slave trade affords us too many instances of cruelties exercised against the harmless Africans. A trade, which, after it was abolished in Europe by the general introduction of Christianity, was again renewed about the fourteenth century by the mercenary Portuguese, and now prosecuted by the Spaniards, French and British, in defiance of every principle of justice, humanity and religion.
Ye moderns, will you not blush at degenerating into ancient barbarity, and at wearing the garb of Christians, when you pursue the practices of savages?
Hasten to reform, and put an end to this unnatural and destructive trade--Do you not know that thousands of your fellow-mortals are annually entombed by it? and that it proves ruinous to your government? You go to Africa to purchase slaves for foreign markets, and lose the advantages of all the proper articles of commerce, which that country affords. You bury your seamen upon the pestiferous shores; and, shocking to humanity! make monsters of all you engage in the traffic.
Who are more brutal than the Capta