Peter Peckard is best known for his work as an abolitionist. His influence as a master at Cambridge University was hugely influential in encouraging the likes of Thomas Clarkson to bring an end to the British slave trade.
Peckard worked as a Church of England minister and spent many years presiding over churches in and around the Peterborough area, taking the role of Dean of Peterborough Cathedral in 1792 at the age of 75. Despite his advancing years, Peckard continued to rouse audiences with passionate and informed speeches against the slave trade. The speech below was printed in the Stamford Mercury in 1795, two years before his death. Unusually and incorrect spellings and grammatical conventions are from the original text.
On the Slave Trade
Extract from the celebrated discourse delivered in the Cathedral Church of Peterborough on the Fast day, February 25, 1795, by P, Peckard, Dean of Peterborough.
But what think ye of our sanguinary traffic in the persons of men? Here we are absolutely without excuse. We fit out our ships with all the instruments of destruction; we load them with preparatory chains, and the engines of torture; all this is done with cool and previous deliberation, shewing a premeditated resolution to enslave, to torture, to destroy. We fill these vessels with bloody-minded ruffians, fitted for every horrid purpose. Being superior in brutal force, we assail far distant nations who have not done us any injury: we attack the dwelling places of innocent and inoffensive men: we rob them of their property: we lay waste their possessions with fire and sword; we force away their natural proprietors without distinction, men, women, children, to captivity, to torture, to public sale like beasts of burthen, to unceasing misery, and to premature death. And this is COMMERCE! – This is the SLAVE TRADE! – Words which are every where pronounced without any convulsive horror, or indeed any apparent sense of the enormity. Execrable!
Was this the act merely of individuals, those individuals must some where answer for the monstrous crime. But we make it in form a national act, we deliberate, we debate upon it, we establish, we protect it by what we call law, which continually involves us in all the horrors of savage cruelty. It stains our hands with blood, which all the waters of the ocean cannot wash away. Yet no power on earth hath authority to make such a law; it is a law to permit the reiterated commission of murther. And if we consider the extraordinary illumination in all matters moral and religious given to us in general by the institution of Christianity; and particularly if we bestow a thought upon its characteristic principle, universal benevolence, and then cast our eyes upon the horrid crimes now alluded to, what words can be equal to the description of our guilt? We must form a new language for the purpose. In fact we are no better than deliberate, hard-hearted apostates from Christianity. But have we never read this solemn denunciation? ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ Yet we, as a nation, every year unjustly shed the blood of thousands of innocent persons. Therefore our blood in a national consideration will some time be shed by men.
May I now be permitted to ask, to what end is all this wickedness and all this misery? Some trivial commercial gain is pretended. But whatever this commercial gain may be, it is very certain, and it has been fairly proved, that it may be more effectually obtained by honest means, unstain’d by cruelty or injustice. So that the whole business is a wicked combination of the blackest crimes, maintained in the most dishonourable manner, by misrepresentation of facts, and gross violation of truth. Nay, so entirely lost to all sense of decency are the partisans of this execrable traffic, that mercenary writers have been procured to represent the scriptures as favouring the cause of slavery. The scriptures doubtless in many places make mention of slaves and give direction for their humane treatment. But this is merely historical, and is not to be considered as an approbation of the practise of making slaves. The scriptures relate various instances of other crimes, of injustice, of cruelty, of idolatry, of human sacrifices, of the sins of Sodom. Does it therefore follow that the scriptures approve these crimes? It is too great an insult upon common sense to pretend it. And with respect to commercial gain, suppose it as high as you please, can commerce justify injustice, murther? Suppose that mountains of silver and mines of gold, and precious stones, were the acquisition, this makes no diminution of the guilt. Murther will still be murther, whether perpetrated by a poor or wealthy man, and will cry with a voice equally loud, for vengeance. But still it is insisted on that by these practice we obtain wealth: our merchants become rich and our nation shines forth in a blaze of prosperity. True. But it is the blaze of a magnificent city in flames, which, though it shines wonderfully bright for its hour, must ere long end in deplorable ruin.
One observation more and I have done. The disgraceful traffick alluded to, certainly ends, if not in the immediate, yet unavoidably in the premature death of the parties injured. Now it is an undeniable truth, in Pagan as well as Christian morality, that he who shortens the life of another by the certain consequences of indefensible conduct towards him, is equally his murtherer as if the death were instant. He who kills any one by poison, though the effect does not take place for months or years, is as much his murtherer as if he had with a dagger pierced his heart. He who by injustice and violence loads a man with chains, stifles him in the heat of a crouded dungeon, or brings on a premature death by intolerable labour, is as much his murtherer as if he had given him poison or made use of a dagger.
Virtuous and benevolent men have exerted themselves to put an end to this disgraceful national evil. Their laudable endeavours hitherto have not been favoured with full success. Yet let them firmly proceed in the glorious cause, not despairing of the goodness of God to assist them in their labour of love, of virtue, and of human happiness. My feeble voice and fervent prayer shall always be exerted on their part, so long as God shall be pleased to give me power to utter a syllable, or pour forth my supplication to Him.
Stamford Mercury, 26 June 1795, p. 4.
