This was the cogent argument of the New Zealander, after
baptism,--used in discussing the topic with the Rev. Mr. Yale. Willing
to give up slaughtering fellow-men for the sake of eating them, he could
not see why it was not wicked to waste so much good food.
If it were objected, that, admitting the making of your enemy's
flesh flesh of your own flesh would necessarily lead to skirmishes,
"surprise-parties," and battles for the sole purpose of getting a
dinner,--to a sort of pre-prandial exercise, as in fishing,--we would
simply answer, "Too late!" Our friends who desire the reopening of the
African slave-trade declare that they wish to buy slaves only. When
statesmen, and missionaries, and simple people with simple sense and
simple hearts, cry out to them, "Stop! for the sake of our common
Father, stop! By reopening the slave-trade, you revive the vilest
crimes, and, for every negro ultimately sold to you on the coast, you
cause the murder of at least ten in the interior, not to speak of those
that are coolly massacred in the barracoon, when no demand exists,"--the
satisfactory reply is: "We have nothing to do with all that; we do not
travel beyond the record.
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