substance of some of them to the reader: "Whether this commerce be not the
cause of incessant wars among the Africans--Whether the Africans, if it
were abolished, might not become as ingenious, as humane, as industrious,
and as capable of arts, manufactures, and trades, as even the bulk of
Europeans--Whether, if it were abolished, a much more profitable trade
might not be substituted, and this to the very centre of their extended
country, instead of the trifling portion which now subsists upon their
coasts--And whether the great hindrance to such a new and advantageous
commerce has not wholly proceeded from that unjust, inhuman,
unchristian-like traffic, called the Slave-trade, which is carried on by
the Europeans." The public proposal of these and other queries by a man of
so great commercial knowledge as Postlethwaite, and by one who was himself
a member of the African commitee, was of great service in exposing the
impolicy as well as immorality of the Slave-trade.

In the year 1761, Thomas Jeffery published an account of a part of North
America, in which he lays open the miserable state of the slaves in the
West Indies, both as to their clothing, their food, their labour, and their
punishments. But, without going into particulars, the general account he
gives of them is affecting: "It is impossible," he says, "for a human heart
to reflect upon the slavery of these dregs of mankind, without in some
measure feeling for their misery, which ends but with their lives--Nothing
can be more wretched than the condition of this people."

Sterne, in his account of the Negro girl in his Life of Tristram Shandy,
took decidedly the part of the oppressed Africans. The pathetic, witty, and
sentimental manner, in which he handled this subject, occasioned many to
remember it, and procured a certain portion of feeling in their favour.

Rousseau contributed not a little in his day to the same end.