ixteenth century, and the extermination of the Caribbean
aborigines by Spain, soon after Columbus had discovered the Western
Continent, which [170] gave cohesion, system, impetus, and
aggressiveness to the trade in African flesh and blood. Then the
factory dealers did not wait at their seaboard mart, as our author
would have us suppose, for the human merchandize to be brought down to
them. The auri sacra fames, the accursed craving for gain, was too
imperious for that. From the Atlantic border to as far inland as their
emissaries could penetrate, their bribes, in every species of
exchangeable commodities, were scattered among the rapacious chiefs on
the river banks; while these latter, incited as well by native ferocity
as by lust of gain, rushed forth to "make war" on their neighbours, and
to kidnap, for sale to the white purchaser, every man, woman, and child
they could capture amidst the nocturnal flames, confusion, tumult, and
terror resulting from their unexpected irruption. That the poor people
thus captured and sold into foreign on age were under worse masters
than those under whom they, on being actually bought and becoming
slaves, were doomed to experience all the atrocities that have thrilled
with horror the conscience of the civilized Christian world, is a
statement of worse than [171] childish absurdity. Every one, except
Mr. Froude and his fellow-apologists for slavery, knows that the
cruelty of savage potentates is summary, uncalculating, and, therefore,
merciful in its ebullitions. A head whisked off, brains dashed out, or
some other short form of savage dispatch, is the preferential method of
destruction. With our author's better masters, there was the long,
dreary vicissitude, beginning from the horrors of the capture, and
ending perhaps years upon years after, in some bush or under the lash
of the driver. The intermediate stages of the starvation life of
hunger, chains, and hideous exposure at the barancoon, the stowing away
like herrings on board the noisome ship, the suffocation, the
deck-sores wrought into the body by the attrition of the bonier parts
of the system against the unyielding wood--all these, says Mr. Froude,
were more tolerable than the swift doing away with life under an
African master! Under such, at all events, the care and comfort
suitable to age were strictly provided for, and cheered the advanced
years of the faithful bondsman.

After a good deal of talk, having the same