Cowper and Southey

The first text that I found interesting was Cowper’s poem Pity for Poor Africans. I believe that his poem illustrates the widely shared opinion of the time that the inhumanity of the slave trade conflicted with its necessity for commerce. Within the poem, Cowley compares the British to the French, Dutch, and Danes illustrating their shared necessity to use slave labor in fear that someone else will capitalize on their economic weakness. It is no question that most economies relied on slaves to keep their sugar and cotton markets flourishing at a substantial profit. Ultimately the speaker resolves that the slave will “lose none by me, though I get a few” (40). This poem uncovers some of the justifications and cyclic reasoning that proliferated the slave trade.

Another piece from the readings that I found interesting was Southey’s The Sailor, Who Had Served in the Slave Trade. This poem illustrates the potential moral and mental corruption of slave masters forced to use corporal punishment. It is clear that the protagonist acted against his will and sense of moral compass when forced to beat the female slave. The closing lines of the poem, “and some who read this dreadful tale/ perhaps will aid with theirs” (119-120), illustrates Southey’s prohibitive intentions for writing the poem. If the reader is not turned off by the gruesome treatment of one human towards another, hopefully the mental and moral corruption of the protagonist has dissuaded them from condoning slavery.