From these vouchers it appears, that the trade of carrying off boys to the plantations in America, and selling them there as slaves, was carried on at Aberdeen, as far down as the year 1744 with an amazing effrontery. It was not carried on in secret, or by stealth, but publicly, and by open violence. The whole neighbouring country were alarmed at it. They would not allow their children to go to Aberdeen for fear of being kidnapped [1]. These they kept at home, emissaries were sent out by the merchants, who took them by violence from their parents, and carried them off. If a child was amissing, it was immediately suspected that he was kidnapped by the Aberdeen merchants; and upon inquiry, that was often found to be the case; and so little pains were taken to conceal them, when in the possession of the merchants, that they were driven in flocks through the town, under the inspection of a keeper, who overawed them with a whip, like so many sheep carrying to the slaughter. Not only were these flocks of unhappy children locked up in barns, and places of private confinement, but even the tollbooth and public workhouses were made receptacles for them, and a town officer employed in keeping them.
Parties of worthless fellows like press-gangs, were hired to patrol the streets, and seize by force such boys as seemed proper subjects for the slave trade.
The practice was but too general. The names of no less than fifteen merchants, concerned in this trade, are mentioned in the proof: and when so many are singled out by the witnesses, it is hardly to be imagined it should be confined to these only, but that they must have omitted many, who were either principals or abettors and decoys in this infamous traffic.
Some of the witnesses depone, that it was the general opinion, that the Magistrates themselves had a hand in it. But what exceeds every proof, and is equal to an acknowledgement, is, that from a book of accounts, recovered on leading the proof, recording the expences laid out on a cargo of these unfortunate objects, it appears, that no less than sixty-nine boys and girls were carried over to America along with me, all of whom suffered the same fate of being shipwrecked, and many of them, that of being sold as slaves.
After such a demonstration of my veracity, and the maltreatment I had formerly suffered, the reader, it is believed, cannot but reflect with some degree of indignation on the iniquitous sentence of the
Magistrates of Aberdeen, and commiserate the dismal situation to which I was reduced [2] in consequence of that tyrannical decision. Stript at once of my all, and of my only means of subsistence, branded with the character of a vagrant and impostor, and stigmatized as such in the Aberdeen Journal, banished from the capital of the country wherein I was born, and left to the mercy of the wide world, loaded with all the infamy that malice could in vent. What a deplorable situation this! I could not help considering myself in a more wretched state, to be reduced to submit to such barbarities in a civilized country and the place of my nativity, than when a captive among the savage Indians, who boast not of humanity [3].
Conscious of my own integrity, and fired with resentment at the indignities poured upon me by this arbitrary decree, I was, by the advice and assistance of some worthy friends, induced to raise a process of oppression and damages against these my judges, before the Court of Session, the supreme tribunal of justice. And as the Lord Ordinary [4] was pleased to allow both parties a proof at large, under the sanction of his authority, I ventured to revisit the city from which I had been formerly banished, where, in spite of all the disadvantages with which power, wealth, and influence could overwhelm me, I was enabled to lead such a proof, as convinced that most
honourable and impartial Bench to which I now appealed, that I had met with the highest injury and injustice, and induced them to decern a suitable re- dress. For the satisfaction of the reader, the sub- stance of this proof is subjoined, as before mentioned.
The following pages, when duly considered, will be obvious to the meanest capacity as the subject is entirely calculated to open the eyes of the deluded poor, many of whom have suffered tribulation for the loss of their children, whom the ties of nature bind every Christian parent to preserve and cherish as their own lives: For as it is absurd to imagine that any parent, though in ever so necessitous a condition, would dispose of their own flesh and blood to strangers [5], who make a prey of innocent children, to accumulate their ill gotten wealth, and support their grandeur, by conveying the unhappy victims to the remotest parts of the globe, where they can have no redress for the injuries done them, these cautions are offered to prevent their falling into the snare.
Sensible I am, that what I have already said against my first persecutors, quadrates with the truth in every particular, and that many unfortunate persons have been involved in misery, and decoyed into slavery and bondage as well as myself. Separated from their dearest relations, and obliged tamely to submit to the caprice and chastisement of arbitrary masters, who have less pity and compassion on them than on their beasts of burden— Hard late to suffer all this! Harder still to be prosecuted for telling the interesting tale! I speak this by woeful experience, as well as from the knowledge of the hard fate of several young people, in the neighbourhood of my nativity whether I had gone in quest of my relations.
After so long an absence, my personal appearance must no doubt recall to the memory of my friends, the manner of my being carried off in my infancy, and they must receive me with wonder and amazement, whom they had for many years deemed for lost. The satisfaction my presence gave them, of which they had been so long deprived, it is not to be expressed; and the comfort I enjoyed in the prospect of seeing my nearest relations, was in some degree a solace for the miseries I had undergone. But, even in this, hard fortune pursued me still, and my troubles were not yet at an end. New enemies started up, who, as if the abettors of those who laid the snare for me when a child, now contrived a new species of captivity for me, when I was a man. They begrudged me my liberty, and the freedom I took to relate my misfortunes; in order therefore to suppress a disagreeable truth, they again deprived me of it for a time: destroyed my means of subsistence, and loaded me with infamy and reproach; from which, thanks to the justice of my cause and the integrity of my judges, I have at last been honourably delivered.
Kidnapping, a species of trade followed by these monsters of impiety for the lust of gain, may be compared to the practices of the savages formerly mentioned, who, to gratify their propensity to mischief, cut, mangle, burn, and destroy, all the innocent people they can catch. And surely the guilt of the kidnappers must be much greater than that of the savage race, who boast not of humanity. If the latter commit such crimes, it is against those they imagine to be their enemies, for the sake of plunder; but the former are void of all excuse. What then can some of the worthy merchants of Aberdeen say for themselves?
Prompted by avarice, and despising the laws of God and all civilized nations, have they not been guilty of this attrocious crime! And does not the blood of the innocent, several of whom have died under the hands of their cruel masters, cry against them for vengeance?
Notes
1. It seems strange to an adult of our time to consider letting a boy go off to town alone on foot. However, we live in a mixed-race society of immense scale, where predation within the body politic is the rule. These people lived in a homogenous society in which predation was such an aberration that neither a police force or the right to bear arms were regarded as normal or necessary. The preying on these boys represented an imposition of a new economic-based and grossly materialistic ethos exported from London to Scotland. Also, for an economy in which a family might stand to make a mere $20 equivalent per year, the children had to be able to contribute to the family income. This was generally done by using them as messengers, errand runners, bill payers, and purchasers to free the adults up for more productive concerns, particularly in a society where travel was conducted at the speed of a walking man.
2. Peter’s fourth time as a captive!
3. In this period “humanity” is equated with Christianity.
4. The aptly-named rich fellow assigned to judge disputes between the poor and the middle class who preyed upon them, who had more ethics in common with the poor. This social trend of the rich and poor allying against the interloping middle-class, that tore down the aristocracy and supplanted their exploitation of the poor in a far more cruel fashion, at about this time, become associated in urban life with the prize-fighting “Fancy” a loose amalgam of poor and rich who showed equal disdain for the materialism of the [effectively, through the control of purse strings] ruling middle class. The upper class, who traditionally won their power through war, would increasingly be sent around the world as officers of poor soldiers to fight resource-based wars of exploitation on behalf of the avaricious middle-class, in the name of Queen and Country.
5. This is either a grossly naïve statement or Peter was playing to the upper class judges of his case, who, in general, would never consider selling off their children, as they represented the one class of the three that valued their blood line above all else, and would like to think that the poor would seek to emulate them in this. Nobility and Royalty—most of all Charles II—consistently came down on the side of the poor, on those rare occasions when the abuses of the middle class came to their attention. The middle-class—more accurately described here as the “merchant class”—essentially included the self-styled gentry of the colonies, who played at being landed gentry, but never adopted the paternalistic concern for the lower classes of the hereditary nobility of the old country and judged a man’s quality on material wealth alone, accepting any rogue among them who managed to amass a fortune, effectively giving birth to the money-based morality that has dominated American life ever since.
