Memoirs of Joseph Sturge (Volume 1)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 Excerpt: ...'If we turn our eyes for a moment to poor unhappy Africa, we shall find that almost the whole of that continent may justly be said to be hermetically sealed against missionary efforts by this system, which, while it tears from its shores annually upwards of 100,000'victims, either to die amid all the horrors of the middle passage, or in hopeless unmitigated toil and bondage, is supposed to destroy two or three times that number in the internal wars fomented to the very heart of the Continent, and the march of the slaves to the coast, to supply the white man's slave ships from the Christian country. What opinion, I would ask (were we Africans), should we form of such Christians as these? Can we wonder that, instead of receiving them as the messengers of peace and glad tidings, they should consider them as cannibals, and not unfrequently commit self-destruction, under the supposition that they shall be devoured when they arrive at the port of their destination? It has indeed been justly said of this horrid system, that it has brought into unnatural combination the evils of two distinct orders of society, caused vices to coalesce which have. no natural affinity, and that in consequence of it, all that has been borne to Africa of the boasted improvements of civilised life has been a masterly skill in the contrivance, and an unhesitating daring in the commission, of crimes which the mind of the savage was too simple to devise, and his heart too gentle to execute. I think it will be unnecessary to say more to show how intimately connected with the extension of these and similar institutions, is the uprooting of slavery and its concomitant evils; and I ought to apologise for having occupied so much time, but before I sit down I wish to express what I believe to be...