Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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That Activity Was Redoubled When It Was Stipulated Between
England And Spain That The Slave-Trade Should Be Prohibited North Of
The Equator, From November 22nd, 1817, And Entirely Abolished On The
30th May, 1820.
The King of Spain accepted from England (which
posterity will one day scarcely believe) a sum of 400,000 pounds
sterling, as a compensation for the loss which might result from the
cessation of that barbarous commerce.
Jamaica received from Africa in the space of three hundred years
850,000 blacks; or, to fix on a more certain estimate, in one hundred
and eight years (from 1700 to 1808) nearly 677,000; and yet that
island does not now possess 380,000 blacks, free mulattos and slaves.
The island of Cuba furnishes a more consoling result; it has 130,000
free men of colour, whilst Jamaica, on a total population half as
great, contains only 35,000.
On comparing the island of Cuba with Jamaica, the result of the
comparison seems to be in favour of the Spanish legislation, and the
morals of the inhabitants of Cuba. These comparisons demonstrate a
state of things in the latter island more favorable to the physical
preservation, and to the liberation of the blacks; but what a
melancholy spectacle is that of Christian and civilized nations,
discussing which of them has caused the fewest Africans to perish
during the interval of three centuries, by reducing them to slavery!
Much cannot be said in commendation of the treatment of the blacks in
the southern parts of the United States; but there are degrees in the
sufferings of the human species.
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