To shew the State of the Trade from LIVERPOOL the following Account, from 1709 to 1771, is inferted.

Befides these fhips, there go annually from North-America and the Weft-Indies at least 60 or 70, and they are yearly increafing, and that their numbers now are confiderable will appear by a certificate figned by thirteen Captains of veffels in the toad of Annamaboo against the governors of the forts, added towards the end of this Appendix, fix of whom came from the colonies.

Gold imported from the Gold Coast before the committee's time, was annually from 120,000 to 150,000 ounces; and one year 400,000 guineas were coined from what was brought from thence; befides 150,000 Negroes have been purchased there in a year.

By a calculation of the trade and the ships employed in it, it appears,... that at least One Million and an Half of Money is annually remitted to Great-Britain for Negroes, and that the value of other articles imported, as gold, wax, ivory, malaguetta pepper, rice, ebony, redwood, and other dyeing woods, amounts to at least half a million more; fo that two millions of money is brought home by this trade in its present

state,

ftate, and it is univerfally allowed, it might be encreafed infinitely more by proper regulations.

It now employs above 50,000 ton of shipping, and is carried on chiefly by our own manufactures, and furnishes the Colonies with 40,000 la bourers yearly. The advantage to the revenue is equal to that of the merchants, and whatsoever is the annual value of the Negroes imported into our Colonies, fo much is the benefit arifing to government from the duties of the commodities produced by their labour: As for example, every Negro is admitted, befides earning provifions for himself, to produce by cultivation an hogfhead of sugar; supposing that to weigh a Ct. the duty is 31. 16s. od. (being 6s. 4d. per Ct.) and that being confidered as an annuity for the Negroe's life is worth 381. which is about the value of a new Negro.

The great encrease of the cultivated lands in our Colonies accounts for fo great a number of Negroes being fent there yearly, and fuch profits accruing from their cultivation and many are now clearing other lands, and will foon make fimilar returns. It has been faid, that the num bers fent arose from fo many dying in the Colonies from ill usage, but that is by no means true: the Planters confider their own intereft, and use them better than they do our own convicts, for this plain reason, that in the latter they have only a temporary intereft, in the former a permanent one; so that were our Plantations abroad carried on by indented fervant's from England, the same reasoning would hold good, and the labour they' must undergo being increased by the fhort duration of property their masters had in them, and by their own unfitness to work in those hot Climates, would be such a drain of men as the Parent Country could not fupport. See Letter [I.] at the end of the Appendix..

T

[ B. ]

HREE of the following treatifes, figned Mercator, appeared in the papers of June and July laft, and, tho' they have met with much abuse, have had no rational confutation. In the fecond, Mercator feems to apprehend more pernicious confequences from Lord Mansfield's decifion, than the generality of Merchants have thought of, who have employed their time on that fubject, which fhall be taken notice of in its proper place, and fome further thoughts submitted to the public.

Thoughts upon the Lawfulness and Expediency of the SLAVE TRADE, addressed to the SOCIETY of MERCHANTS trading to Africa from the Port of London.

if

THE origin of flavery may perhaps admit of a doubt, but both sacred and profane history concur in allowing it to have been the practice, even from the earlieft account of time. Among the Heathens, conqueft undoubtedly was their plea for enflaving the vanquished countries; and Herodotus, in his Melpomene, adds, the many cruelties practised by the Scythians, and other neighbouring nations, on their prisoners of war, whom they looked upon as entirely their property, and whom, they did not carry away captive, they put to death upon the spot. The Greeks and Romans, in their brightest and most learned æras, had their daves, both taken in war and purchased with money, and from their times down to the prefent it has been the univerfal practice of not only every barbarous, but every civilized nation. I have been obliged to preface my fentiments with the fanction of profane antiquity to defend myself from the fneers of those great geniufes who allow of no authority drawn from facred hiftory; but to the fedate, to the reasonable, to the Christian readers, I fhall more fully fet forth the lawfulness of the Slave Trade from the exprefs allowance of it in Holy Writ. As to its origin,

it

it may poffibly be derived from that sentence expreffed against Canaan (from whom the Africans are defcended) by his father Noah at the hour of his death.- * Curfed be Canaan, a fervant of fervants shall he be unto his brethren." But both the origin of flavery, and the colour of the Africans, being incapable of pofitive proof, I shall leave these points for the curious, and proceed to the more express mention of flavery. When Jofeph was ruler in Egypt, under Pharaoh, in the fecond year, when the Egyptians had parted with their money and cattle for bread, they came to Joseph, and said, "There is not aught left in the fight of my. Lord, but our bodies and our lands: buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be fervants unto Pharaoh." By the Egyptians faying they had nothing left but their bodies and their lands, It is plain that both were confidered as property; as abfolute goods and chattels, as their money and their cattle; and the boors in Ruffia and Poland were, and may be now, in fome places, obliged to till the ground for their Lord's profit; a plain relic of this Egyptian fervitude in both inftances, bodies and lands. Had this been contrary to the law of God, it would doubtless have been forbidden, and probably in the Commandments from the Mount; but by them their proper treatment only is exacted, not their freedom. They fay, "The feventh day is the fabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shall not do any work, nor thy manfervant, nor thy maid-servant." The fouls of their fervants were their own, and were not to be under the dominion of their masters: they were to have one day allowed them for the fervice of God, but their bodies were their mafter's property, and for them they were to work the other fix days. The law of God allows it poffible even for an Hebrew to be a slave, by establishing the different treatment he is to receive from the hands of his brethren. 66 If thou buy an Hebrew fervant, fix years he shall ferve, and in the feventh he fhall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife fhall go out with him. If his mafter have given him a wife, and he have borne him fons and daughters, the wife and her

chil

Genefis ix. 25. † Genefis xlvii. 18, 19. Exodus xx. 10. || Exodus xxi. 2, 3, &c.

children shall be her mafter's, and he fhall go out by himself. And if the fervant shall plainly fay, I love my mafter, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free, then his master fhall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him unto the door-poft, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he fhall ferve him for ever." By this exprefs law, as to their own nation, it is as certain they bought others. They could give them wives, and retain them and their chil dren, and if the very Hebrews once paffed the first opportunity of the fabbatical year to affert their freedom, they, like the flaves of other nations, were fixed to the freehold, and continued fervants for ever. Their fix years fervitude was like that of fuch of our indented fervants, as serve fo many years for a sum of money laid down, and which in that time they may be supposed to have earned, and it would be the greatest absurdity to imagine, a foreign flave should be inftantly free on touching his master's home, when a native was confined to a fix years fervitude probably for a lefs price. The law goes on, "* If a man fell his daughter, the shall not, &c." By this it appears, that flavery might arife from the will of the father of the family, subject nevertheless to fuch restrictions as the law of God laid down. In the 21ft verse it is exprefly faid of the maf ter, "The fervant is his money ;" yet he could not be wantonly cruel, for the fmiting a fervant fo as that he loft an eye or a tooth made him free. His neighbour could not injure him in his property, for if his ox killeth a man or maid fervant, he fhall give unto their master thirty fhekels of filver." Here was the price set on the head of each, and the mafter indemnified. Zechariah records the fame price, and this price the malicious rulers of the fynagogue gave the infatuated Judas for his facred Master, as if they had been purchasing a common flave.-In the more full declaration of the law in Leviticus, 25th chapter, after the statutes for securing land, houses, and other poffeffions, in the families on whom they were first bestowed, and to whom every 50th, or jubilee year, they were to return, there follows the law of flaves in thefe clear

46

Exodus xxi. 7, &c. + Ibid. ver. 26, ≥7. Matthew xxvi. 15-Ezek. xxvij. 13.

terms

Ibid. ver. 32.-Zech. v. 11, 12.—