ngs, or without contracting those habits of moroseness and
cruelty, which would brutalize their nature. Now, if we consider that
persons could not easily become captains (and to these the barbarities were
generally chargeable by actual perpetration, or by consent) till they had
been two or three voyages in this employ, we shall see the reason why it
would be almost a miracle, if they, who were thus employed in it, were not
rather to become monsters, than to continue to be men.

While I was at Bristol, I heard from an officer of the Alfred, who gave me
the intelligence privately, that the steward of a Liverpool ship, whose
name was Green, had been murdered in that ship. The Alfred was in Bonny
river at the same time, and his own captain (so infamous for his cruelty,
as has been before shown) was on board when it happened. The circumstances,
he said, belonging to this murder, were, if report were true, of a most
atrocious nature, and deserved to be made the subject of inquiry. As to the
murder itself, he observed, it had passed as a notorious and uncontradicted
fact.

This account was given me just as I had made an acquaintance with Mr.
Falconbridge, and I informed him of it. He said he had no doubt of its
truth. For in his last voyage he went to Bonny himself, where the ship was
then lying, in which the transaction happened. The king and several of the
black traders told him of it. The report then current was simply this, that
the steward had been barbarously beaten one evening; that after this he was
let down with chains upon him into a boat, which was alongside of the ship,
and that the next morning he was found dead.

On my arrival at Liverpool, I resolved to inquire into the truth of this
report. On looking into one of the wet docks, I saw the name of the vessel
alluded to. I walked over the decks of several others, and got on board
her. Two people were walking up and down her, and one was leaning upon a
rail by the side. I asked the latter how many slaves this ship had carried
in her last voyage. He replied, he could not tell; but one of the two
persons walking about could answer me, as he had sailed out and returned in
her. This man came up to us, and joined in conversation. He answered my
question and many others, and would have shown me the ship. But on asking
him how many seamen had died on the voyage, he changed his manner, and
said, with apparent hesitation, he could not tell. I asked him next, what
had becom