SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES, FOR IN THEM YE THINK YE HAVE LONDON: Printed for JOHN STOCKDALE, oppofite Burlington-house, Piccadilly. 1788. то The WORSHIPFUL the MAYOR, RECORDER, ALDERMEN, BAILIFFS, And other MEMBERS of the COMMON COUNCIL Of the ancient and loyal BOROUGH and CORPORATION of LIVERPOOL, The following SCRIPTURAL RESEARCHES Are most respectfully inscribed BY Their most obedient And most humble Servant, RAYMUND HARRIS. 276579 PREFACE. NWILL UNW LLING to incur the displeasure of every friend to justice, religion, and humanity, haften to inform the Reader, who has caft an eye on the Title-page, that, in attempting to establish the licitnefs of the SLAVE-TRADE, nothing is farther removed from my thoughts, than to fet up as an advocate for injuftice and oppreffion: I am as much at enmity with both, as the most fanguine advocate for African Liberty may be. I am well apprized, that acts of violence and oppreffion, however authorized by numbers, however firmly established by long use, and a kind of traditional inattention to the fufferings of perfons in an abject condition of life, can never change the criminality of their nature. Whatever is effentially incompatible with the facred and inalienable rights of juftice and humanity, can claim no place in the catalogue of virtues, even of the loweft rank; it must be for ever branded with every mark of infamy and guilt. FAR then from attempting the least encroachment on the rights of Virtue, my fole drift in the present Tract is to examine with the utmost impartiality, the intrinfic nature of the SLAVE-TRADE: that is, whether the Trade itself, prefcinding from every other incidental circumstance, which may have rendered the practice of it hateful, or even criminal, be in its own nature licit or illicit. Now, it being evident in the first place, that the intrinfic morality or immorality, licitnefs or illicitness of all human purfuits is effentially inherent to the purfuits |
