Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/26

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THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.

has occasioned may be gained, when we remember that during the last three centuries about forty millions of human beings have been torn from Africa, for the purpose of being reduced to servitude. Besides the loss in war, from fifteen to twenty per cent, die on the passage, and many more die after being landed.[1]

The gifted and humane Wilberforce, in a speech before Parliament,[2] remarked that:

"He would now say a few words relative to the "middle passage," principally to show that regulations could not effect a cure of the evil there. Mr. Isaac Wilson had stated in his evidence, that the ship in which he sailed, only three years ago, was of three hundred and seventy tons, and that she carried six hundred and two slaves. Of these she lost one hundred and fifty-five. There were three or four other vessels in company with her, which belonged to the same
  1. Fifty years ago the Christian (!) slave trade was 80,000 annually now 200,000! Mohammedan slave trade, 50,000 annually. The aggregate loss of life in the Christian trade, in the successive stages of seizure, march, detention, middle passage, after landing, and seasoning, is 145 per cent., or 1,450 for every 1,000 available for use in the end-, and 100 per cent. loss of life, by the same causes, in the Mohammedan trade. Consequently, the annual victims of the Christian slave trade are 375,600; of the Mohammedan, 100,000. Total loss to Africa, 475,000 annually; or, 23,750,000 in half a century, at the same rate.

    A slave ship named Jehovah (!) made three voyages between Brazil and Angola in thirteen months, of 1836-7, and landed 700 slaves the first voyage, 600 the second, and 520 the third, — in all, 1820. — Buxton.

    The single town of Liverpool, England, realized in this traffic, before its abolition in that empire, a net profit of more than $100,000,000 — History of Liverpool.

  2. From Clarkson's "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade."