"
Capt. Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in
this respect. But he did not keep his word; for when he went to Africa
again, _he seized_ many of the inhabitants _and carried them off_ as
slaves, "Here (says Hill) began the horrid practice of forcing the
Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity, which, so sure as
there is vengeance in Heaven for the worst of crimes, will sometime be
the destruction of all who encourage it." Take as an instance of the
second what Labat, a Roman missionary, records in his account of the
Isles of America. He says, that Louis the Thirteenth was very uneasy,
when he was about to issue the edict, by which all Africans coming into
his colonies were to be made slaves; and that this uneasiness continued,
till he was assured that the introduction of them in this capacity into
his foreign dominions was the readiest way of _converting them_ to the
principles _of the Christian religion_. It was upon these ideas then,
namely, that the Africans left their own country voluntarily, and that
they were to receive the blessings of Christianity, and upon these
alone, that the first transportations were allowed, and that the first
_English_ grants and Acts of Parliament, and that the first _foreign_
edicts, sanctioned them. We have therefore the fact well authenticated,
as it relates _to original Government grants and permissions_, that the
owners of many of the Creole slaves in our colonies have no better title
to them as property, than as being the descendants of persons forced
away from their country and brought thither by a traffic, which had its
allowed origin in _fraud and falsehood_.
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