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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In Order To Slacken Gradually The Bonds Of Slavery The Laws Against
The Slave-Trade Must Be Most Strictly Enforced, And Punishments
Inflicted For Their Infringement; Mixed Tribunals Must Be Formed, And
The Right Of Search Exercised With Equitable Reciprocity.
It is
melancholy to learn that, owing to the culpable indifference of some
of the governments of Europe, the
Slave-trade (more cruel from having
become more secret) has dragged from Africa, within ten years, almost
the same number of negroes as before 1807; but we must not from this
fact infer the inutility, or, as the secret partisans of slavery
assert, the practical impossibility of the beneficent measures adopted
first by Denmark, the United States and Great Britain, and
successively by all the rest of Europe. What passed from 1807 till the
time when France recovered possession of her ancient colonies, and
what passes in our days in nations whose governments sincerely desire
the abolition of the slave-trade and its abominable practices, proves
the fallacy of this conclusion. Besides, is it reasonable to compare
numerically the importation of slaves in 1825 and in 1806? With the
activity prevailing in every enterprise of industry, what an increase
would the importation of negroes have taken in the English West Indies
and the southern provinces of the United States if the slave-trade,
entirely free, had continued to supply new slaves, and had rendered
the care of their preservation and the increase of the old population,
superfluous? Can we believe that the English trade would have been
limited, as in 1806, to the sale of 53,000 slaves; and that of the
United States, to the sale of 15,000?
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