The horrible system of slavery which exists in the mining districts of the Brazils, and which is carried on at present in no small degree by British capital and British influence, appears to have entirely escaped the attention of the Legislature.
At a meeting of the British Missionary Society last week, the Rev. Thomas Roberts stated, that within the period of the years 1820 and 1829, not less than 264,000 human beings had been brought from Africa, and sold for the cultivation of the soil and the working of the Brazilian mines. This had been done by a gross violation of the treaty entered into with the Brazils in 1823, that the Brazilian slave trade was to cease in four years from the time of that negotiation.
The Rev. gentleman, after a most heart rending description of the cruelties inflicted on the Brazilian slaves, called on the West India planters to unite in attempting the overthrow of this system of slavery, the existence of which must, he said, be fatal to the prosperity of the British colonies, now in a state of freedom.
He appealed also to the eloquence and moral influence of the pulpit, and conjured the Anti-Slavery Society to rekindle the expiring embers of its zeal, and not to relax its efforts, whilst it was known that a single British adventurer was employed in the disgraceful, inhuman, and ever-to-be accursed trading in human beings.
Lady in litter being carried by her slaves, province of São Paulo in Brazil
Source
Collection: The Liberator
Publication: The Liberator
Date: January 18, 1834
Title: Brazilian Slavery
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
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