ABSTRACT
A Drunken actor, * on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Williamson-square, on being hissed by the audience for presenting himself before them—not for the first time—in that condition, is said to have steadied himself, and vociferated, with offended majesty, “I have not come here to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town is cemented with an African’s blood.” This was a home-thrust which might have made the daring offender the hero of an unrehearsed tragedy. The taunt, however, would have been almost as applicable hurled at London, Bristol, or certain southern port audiences, whose bricks were more or less cemented in the same sanguinary fashion for fully one hundred years before the people of Liverpool ever soiled their hands and souls in the African slave trade. The brilliant success which crowned the shrewd enterprise of Liverpool merchants in this, as in all other branches of commerce, has made them the focus of scorching censure, while the older offenders, left far behind in the race for pelf, are comparatively forgotten, and their exceeding weight of guilt overlooked. In a word, Liverpool, while sowing wild oats in its commercial youth, or leading a sort of double life—wedded to freedom at home, and courting slavery abroad,—took a hand in this dark game, swept the board, and, rather unjustly, has had to bear the concentrated odium attached to the whole of the play. Roscoe, all his life the firm, but statesman-like opponent of the man-traffic, speaking at a public dinner held at the “Golden Lion,” to celebrate his election as one of the representatives in Parliament of his native town, thus referred to the national character of the iniquity:—
“It has been the fashion throughout the Kingdom to regard the town of Liverpool and its inhabitants in an unfavourable light on account of the share it has in this trade. But I will venture to say that this idea is founded on ignorance, and I will here assert, as I always shall, that men more independent, of greater public virtue and private worth, than the merchants of Liverpool do not exist in any part of these kingdoms. The African trade is the trade of the nation, not of any particular place; it is a trade, till lately, sanctioned by Parliament and long continued under the authority of the Government. I do not make this remark in vindication of the character of any gentlemen engaged in the trade, who stand in need of none, but in order to shew that if any loss should arise to any individuals who are concerned in it, it is incumbent upon Government to make them a full compensation for the losses they may so sustain.”
