ABSTRACT
The causes which led to the agitation against the slave-trade will now be briefly stated. The cruelty, the injustice, and the impolicy of the traffic had been exposed in Dr. Beattie’s “Essay on Truth”.(1770), in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” (1776), in Paley’s “Moral Philosophy” (1785), and in John Wesley’s “Thoughts on Slavery.” The pulpit began to denounce the evil, and the spirit moved the Quakers of America and England to the most vigorous and chivalrous crusade against a traffic so peculiarly revolting to their humane and pacific tenets. In the year 1776, Mr. David Hartley, member for Hull, brought the question before Parliament. It was reserved, however, for Granville Sharp, the champion of the negro Somerset, to call public attention to a case, which did more than any collection of essays to stamp the horrors of the trade upon the minds of disinterested persons, and produced an earnest desire for its abolition. It was a cause tried at Guildhall, in the year 1783, in which certain underwriters were heard against Gregson and others, of Liverpool, owners of the slave-ship Zong, Captain Collingwood. It was alleged that the captain and officers of that vessel had thrown overboard into the sea 132 living slaves, in order to defraud the underwriters, by claiming the value of the same, as if they had been lost in a natural way. It came out in the evidence that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty had already died, and several were ill and likely to follow, when Captain Collingwood proposed to James Kelsall, the mate, and others, to throw several of the negroes overboard, stating that if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners, but that if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters. He accordingly selected 132 of the most sickly of the slaves, 54 of whom were immediately thrown overboard, and 42 on the following day. A few days later, the remaining 26 were brought upon deck. The first batch of 16 submitted to be thrown into the sea, but the rest, with a noble resolution, would not permit the officers to touch them, and leaped overboard after their companions.
