sheer horror at sea
[SLAVERY]. The Slave Trade delineated: Being Extracts from a Periodical Work, called the Christian Observer, for June 1804. London, Whittingham for Hatchard, 1805.
8vo. Recent marbled wrappers; pp. 20, printed in two columns; one corner of title-page clipped, light browning; a good copy of a great rarity.
This combined offprint opens with a first-hand report by 'Leo Africanus' of a journey recently made on a slave ship from West Africa to the West Indies. On board the ship the Captian told the visitors and traveller 'that a slave ship was a very different thing from what it had been represented. We should find the slaves rejoicing in their happy state' (p. 3). The truth, however, showed the sheer horror of this crime against humanity at high sea. This is followed on page ten by a discussion of a Hatchard-published pamphlet on the abolition of the slave trade. The present pamphlet is concluded by the refutation of the printed Letter to the Right Honorable W.Pitt containing some new Arguments against the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in which the author, Britannicus, had argued 'if we give freedom to the negroes, we shall ourselves indubitable become slaves of Bonaparte' (p. 13). Post-truth over two hundred years ago.
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