Note 227 — Chapter XIX

An instance occurred at Liverpool of the attachment of some of these people to their master. At the commencement of the direct trade from Brazil to Great Britain, some small vessels came to Liverpool manned in part with slaves, owing to their masters being ignorant that their arrival upon British ground would make them free. However the men themselves were soon made acquainted with this circumstance, and many of them availed themselves of the advantages which were to be thus obtained. One of the men belonging to a small bark left his vessel, and having entered himself as a seaman on board some other ship, returned to persuade three of his companions to do the same; but he was answered, that they were well treated where they were, had always been used kindly, and therefore had no wish to try any other way of life. These three men returned to Brazil in the bark, and I have heard that they were set at liberty by their master on their arrival there. I hope it was so. When the advocates of slavery relate such stories as these, they give them as tending to prove that slaves in general are happy. Anecdotes of this kind demonstrate individual goodness in the master and individual gratitude in the slave, but they prove nothing generally; they do not affect the great question; that is rested upon grounds which are too deeply fixed to be moved by single instances of evil or of good.