In a twelvemonth, then, what must be the proportion of the dead?
No less than forty-three in a hundred, which is seventeen times the usual rate of mortality; for all the estimates of life suppose no more than a fortieth of the people, or two and a half in the hundred, to die within the space of a year.

Such then is the comparison.

In the ordinary course of nature the number of persons, (including those in age and infancy, the weakest periods of existence,) who perish in the space of a twelvemonth, is at the rate of but two and a half in a hundred; but in an African voyage, notwithstanding the old are excluded and few infants admitted, so that those who are shipped are in the firmest period of life, the list of deaths, presents an annual mortality of forty-three in a hundred.

It presents this mortality even in vessels from the windward coast of Africa; but in those which sail to Bonny, Benin, and the Calabars, from whence the greatest proportion of the slaves are brought, this mortality is increased by a variety of causes, (of which the greater length of the voyage is one,) and is said to be twice as large which supposes that in every hundred the deaths annually amount to no less than eighty-six.

Yet even the former comparatively low mortality; of which the counsel speaks with so much satisfaction, as a proof of the kind and compassionate treatment of the slaves, even this indolent and lethargic destruction gives to the march of death seventeen times its usual speed.