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• 1 media/ship.jpg 2017-02-28T13:25:11-08:00 Newton Compared to Other Writers 9 plain 2017-03-25T09:56:47-07:00 In some of the other works read in class, specifically Heart of Darkness and Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa, the authors share the common idea of slavery and that the Slave Trade is inhumane. But, the difference between Newton and the others is made apparent in the extent to which they carry that idea. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow comments on the awfulness Imperialistic expansion has brought, but he only comments on the effects to his fellow white men, not on the horrible wrongs done to the Africans and their country because of those white men. Mary Kingsley, like many others, can work with the Natives and can even, to an extent, treat them with decency and respect, but she always maintains a separation between herself and them. Newton details the full extent of the African Slave Trade and, surprisingly, elevates the Natives to an equal status with the English - that of deserving the same basic human decency. In Kingsley's and Marlow's stories the Africans are displayed as wild, exotic "creatures" but never as people, people deserving of the same universal respect of persons and life that is shown to the English. Newton ends his pamphlet, his penance if you may, with this, "Though unwilling to give offense to a single person; in such a cause, I ought not to be afraid of offending many, by declaring the truth. If, indeed there can be many, who even interest can prevail upon to contradict the common sense of mankind, by pleading for a commerce, so iniquitous, so cruel, so oppressive, so destructive, as the African Slave Trade!" (41). This is an ideal that is much ahead of its time, Newton published his pamphlet in 1788, while Heart of Darkness was published in 1899 and Mary Kingsley in 1897, both during a time when the excitement of Imperialism was waning. Slavery was abolished in England in 1833.