any ox or camel could be at this day. Three nations, Javan, Tubal, and Meshecht, are mentioned as having their principal trade at Tyre in the selling of men; and, as late as the time of St John, it is mentioned as the principal trade of several great cities 1. Yet no prohibition from God, or censure from the prophets, have ever stigmatised it either as irreligious or immoral; on the contrary, it is always spoken of as favourably as any species of commerce whatever. For this, and many other reasons which I could men tion, I cannot think, that purchasing slaves is, in itself, either cruel or unnatural. To purchase any living creature to abuse it afterwards, is certainly both base and criminal; and the crime becomes still of a deeper dye, when our fellow-creatures suffer. But, although this is an abuse which accidentally follows the trade, it is no necessary part of the trade; and it is against this abuse that the wisdom of the legislature should direct the coercion, not against the practice itself. On the eastern side of the peninsula of Africa, many thousand slaves are sold to Asia, exactly in the same manner as those on the west side are sent to the West Indies; but no one, that ever I heard, has as yet opened his mouth against the sale of Africans to the East Indies; though there is an aggravation in this last sale of slaves that should touch us much more than the other, where no such additional grievance can be pretended. The slaves, sold into Asia, are most of them Christians; they are sold to Mahometans, and, with their liberty, they are certainly deprived of their religion likewise. But the treatment of the Asiatics being much more humane than what the Af + Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 13. ricans, sold to the West Indies, experience, no clamour has yet been raised against this commerce in Asia, because its only bad consequence is apostacy; a proof to me that religion has no part in the present dispute, or, as I have said, that the abuse which accidentally follows the purchasing of slaves, not the trade itself, should be considered as the grievance. The merchandize of slaves was easily established by the India trade; and has contributed much to abolish two savage African customs, the eating of captives, and sacrificing them to idols, once universal in that whole continent. There is still alive a man of the name of Matthews, who was present at one of those bloody banquets, on the west of Africa, to the northward of Senega. It is probable the continuation of the slave trade would have soon restrained, and then altogether abolished these on the west side also. Many other reasons could be alledged, did my plan permit it. But I shall content myself at present, with saying, that I very much fear that a relaxation and effeminacy of manners, rather than a genuine tenderness of heart, have been the cause of this violent paroxysm of philanthropy, and of some other measures adopted of late to the discouragement of discipline, which I do not doubt will soon be felt to contribute their mite to the decay both of trade and navigation that will necessarily follow. The Ethiopian shepherds at first carried on the trade on their own side of the Red Sea; they carried their India commodities to Thebes, and likewise to the different black nations to the south-west; in return, they brought back gold, probably at a cheaper rate, because certainly by a shorter carriage than by that from Ophir. The Shepherds, for the most part friends and allies of the Egyptians, or Cushites, at times were enemies to them. The Shepherds were Sabeans, worshipping Im the host of heaven-the sun, moon, and stars. mediately upon the building of Thebes and the perfection of sculpture, idolatry and the grossest materialism greatly corrupted the more pure and speculative religion of the Sabeans. Soon after the building of Thebes, we see that Rachel, Jacob's wife, had idols * ; we need seek no other probable cause of the devastation that followed, than difference of religion. Thebes was destroyed by Salatis, who overturned the first Dynasty of Cushite, or Egyptian kings, begun by Menes, in what is called the second age of the world, and founded the first Dynasty of the Shepherds, who behaved very cruelly, and wrested the lands from their first owners. It was this Dynasty that Sesostris destroyed, after calling it by his father's name, Ammon No, making those decorations that we have seen of the harp in the sepulchres on the west, and building Diospolis on the opposite side of the river. The second conquest of Egypt by the Shepherds was that under Sabaco, by whom it has been imagined Thebes was destroyed, in the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah, who is said to have made peace with Sot king of Égypt, as the translator has called him, mistaking So for the name of the king, whereas it only denoted his quality of Shepherd. From this it is plain, all that the scripture mentions about Ammon No, applies to Diospolis, on the other side of the river. Ammon No and Diospolis, though they were on different sides of the river, were considered as one city, through which the Nile flowed, dividing it into two parts. This is plain from profane history, as well as from the prophet Nahum *, who describes it very exactly, if in place of the word sea was substituted river, as it ought to be. There was a third invasion of the Shepherds after the building of Memphis, where a † king of Egypt t is said to have inclosed two hundred and forty thousand of them in a city called Abaris; they surrendered upon capitulation, and were banished the country into the land of Canaan. That two hundred and forty thousand men should be inclosed in one city, so as to bear a siege, seems to me extremely improbable; but be it so, all that it can mean is, that Memphis, built in Lower Egypt near the Delta, had war with the Shepherds of the Isthmus of Suez, or the districts near them, as those of Thebes had before with the Shepherds of the Thebaid. The mountains which the Agaazi inhabit, are called Habab, from which it comes, that they themselves have got that name. Habab, in their language, and in Arabic likewise, signifies a serpent; and this, I suppose, explains that historical fable in the book of Axum, which says, a serpent conquered the province of Tigré, and reigned there. It may be asked, Is there no other people that inhabit Abyssinia, but these two nations, the Cushites and * Nahum, chap. iii. S. + Misphragmuthosis. Manetho, Apud. Josephum Apion. lib. 1. p. 460. In the Appendix to the Keber Neguste, or book of Axum, Arwe, i. e. the Serpent, is the first king of Axum, and reigned 400 years. Before the conversion to Christianity, the Ethiopic historians say, that part of their nation worshipped Arwe, the Serpent, and part were Jews, people of the law. This God, or rather symbol of the Deity, is reckoned their first king, in the same manner as the Egyptians made the gods the first sovereigns of Egypt. E. the Shepherds? Are there no other nations, whiter, or fairer, than them, living to the southward of the Agaazi? Whence did these come? At what time, and by what name, are they called? To this, I answer, That there are various nations which agree with this description, who have each a particular name, and who are all known by that of Habesh, in Latin Convena, signifying a number of distinct people meeting accidentally in one place. The word has been greatly misunderstood, and misapplied, both by Scaliger and Ludolf, and a number of others; but nothing is more consonant to the history of the country than the translation I have given it, nor will the word itself, in the Geez, bear any other. The Chronicle of Axum, the most ancient repository of the antiquities of that country, a book improperly esteemed as the first in authority after the holy scriptures, says, that between the creation of the world and the birth of our Saviour there were 5500 years; that Abyssinia had never been inhabited till 1808 years before Christ; and 200 years after that, which was in 1600, it was laid waste by a flood, the face of the country much changed and deformed, so that it was denominated at that time Ourè Midre, or, the country laid waste, as in scripture itself, a land which the waters, or floods, had spoiled †; that about the 1400th year before Christ it was taken possession of by a variety of people speaking different languages, who, as they were in friendship with the Agaazi, or Shepherds, possessing the high country of Tigrè, came and sat down beside them in a peaceable manner, each occupying the lands that were before Eight years Septuagint. less than the Greeks, and other followers of the Isaiah, chap. xvii. ver. 2. |