Two important publications in the early years of the abolition movement. Before the Abolition Act was passed in 1807, a committee was formed in the House of commons to hear evidence respecting the slave trade. These hearings led to the putting forward of several bills to test the strength of feeling in the House of Commons. The BILL for providing certain Temporary Regulations respecting the Transportation of the Natives of Africa … was one such.
Parliamentary hearings weighing the evidence against the slave trade commenced in 1789 and only finished two years later. This publication pre-dates Wilberforce’s much better known An Abstract of the Evidence delivered before a Select Committee (London, 1791) and from which it was partly drawn. The evidence here is supplied by (among others) Robert Norris, a Carolina merchant trading a Liverpool; John Matthews, a Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy; Archibald Dalziel, who had made three voyages across the Middle Passage; James Penny, who had made eleven voyages; plus James Jones and John Tarleton.
The second item, printed just a month later, compiles a list of correspondence concerning the colony at Sierra Leone. It opens with a 1786 letter from Lord Sydney regarding a plan for “sending out of this Country a Number of Black Poor (many of whom have been discharged from His Majesty’s Naval Service at the Conclusion of the late War [i.e. the Revolutionary War], and others after having been employed with the Army in North America.” He adds that “Measures should immediately be taken for acquiring from Native Chiefs a Territory of sufficient Extent for the settling of the said Black Poor …”
This is followed by a sequence of letters between Lord Sydney, the Admiralty, a Mr Stephens, and Captain Thompson culminating in the passage of the first group of settlers on HMS Nautilus. Critically, the document includes with a list of the names of the 441 settlers on board, 122 of whom died on the voyage or shortly after landing. It concludes with the “Cession of a Territory on the Banks of the River Sierra Leona, for the Accommodation of the Black Poor, 11 June 1787; delivered by Captain Thompson, 2 January 1789.” This document was signed with the marks of King Tom, Chief Pabongee and Queen Yammacouba. A list of presents is printed at the bottom of the page.
Both publications are rare. For the first item, OCLC locates copies at Brown, Columbia, Chicago, Minnesota, Georgia, Oxford, University of London. For the second it finds copies at Princeton, Georgia and Oxford only.
