TO THE

RELIGION, JUSTICE, AND HUMANITY

OF

THE INHABITANTS

OF THE

BRITISH EMPIRE,

IN BEHALF OF THE

NEGRO SLAVES IN THE WEST INDIES.

BY

WM WILBERFORCE, ESQ., M. P.

Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his
chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without
wages, and giveth him not for his work.

JEREMIAH.

S.C.R. HT

857

.AI

no. I

AN

APPEAL,

&c. &c.

To all the inhabitants of the British Empire, who value the favour of God, or are alive to the interests or honour of their country to all who have any respect for justice, or any feelings of humanity, I would solemnly address myself. I call upon them, as they shall hereafter answer, in the great day of account, for the use they shall have made of any power or influence with which Providence may have entrusted them, to employ their best endeavours, by all lawful and constitutional means, to mitigate, and, as soon as it may be safely done, to terminate the Negro Slavery of the British Colonies; a system of the grossest injustice, of the most heathenish irreligion and immorality, of the most unprece dented degradation, and unrelenting cruelty.

At any time, and under any circumstances, from such a heavy load of guilt as this oppression amounts to, it would be our interest noless than our duty to absolve ourselves. But I will not attempt to conceal, that the present embarrassments and dis

B

tress of our country-a distress, indeed, in which the West Indians themselves have largely participated-powerfully enforce on me the urgency of the obligation under which we lie, to commence, without delay, the preparatory measures for putting an end to a national crime of the deepest moral malignity.

The long continuance of this system, like that of its parent the Slave Trade, can only be accounted for by the generally prevailing ignorance of its real nature, and of its great and numerous evils. Some of the abuses which it involves have, indeed, been drawn into notice. But when the public attention has been attracted to this subject, it has been unadvisedly turned to particular instances of cruelty, rather than to the system in general, and to those essential and incurable vices which will invariably exist wherever the power of man over man is unlimited. Even at this day, few of our countrymen, comparatively speaking, are at all apprised of the real condition of the bulk of the Negro Population; and, perhaps, many of our non-resident West Indian proprietors are full as ignorant of it as other men. Often, indeed, the most humane of the number, (many of them are men whose humanity is unquestionable,) are least of all aware of it, from estimating, not unnaturally, the actual state of the case, by the benevolence of their own well meant, but unavailing directions to their managers in the western hemisphere.

The persuasion, that it is to the public ig norance of the actual evils of West Indian Slavery that we can alone ascribe its having been suffered so long to remain unreformed and almost unnoticed, is strongly confirmed by referring to what passed when the question for abolishing the Slave Trade was seriously debated in 1792. For then, on the general ground merely of the incurable injustice and acknowledged evils of slavery, aggravated, doubtless, by the consideration that it was a slavery forcibly imposed on unoffending men for our advantage, many of the most strenuous and most formidable opponents of the immediate abolition of the Slave Trade charged us with gross inconsistency, in not fairly following up our own arguments, and proposing the gradual extinction also of slavery itself. "If," they argued, "it is contrary, as you maintain, to the soundest principles of justice, no less than to the clearest dictates of humanity, to permit the seizure, and transportation across the Atlantic, of innocent men to labour for our benefit, can it be more just, or less inhuman, to leave the victims of our rapacity to a life of slavery and degradation, as the hopeless lot of themselves and their descendants for ever? If indeed, it had been true, as was alleged by the African merchants, that the slaves were only the convicts of Africa, condemned after a fair trial, or that they were delivered by the mercy of their British purchasers from becoming the victims of a bloody superstition, or of a relent