tween decks, with a cabin fitted up for the reception of slaves; three men to two tons in all vessels above 150 tons, with equal accommodations; and one man to one ton, in all other vessels, without such accommodations. Sir William said this proportion diminished a little upon the average of three years; that he was aware it was not equal to two men to a ton, but that no man in his senses could believe it to be really detrimental to the Trade.

Mr. Gascoyne said, that less than two men to a ton was less than could be consistent with the continuance of the Trade. Such a mode of filling up the blanks would prove an abolition of the Trade, and therefore he must take the sense of the Committee upon it.

Lord Penrhyn contended against depriving persons, so interested as his constituents were in the Slave Trade, of their rightful advantages by an "ex post facto" law. The measure would abolish the Trade, as far as the present traders were concerned in it. On the African Trade, it ought to be remembered, that twothirds of the commerce of this country depended. The Committee might prevent Great Britain from carrying on the Trade, but they could not prevent other countries from carrying it on: they would therefore not befriend the Africans.

Sir W. Dolben affirmed, that he had not asserted things incapable of being substantiated by proof. He was ready to call witnesses, and adduce evidence, both by documents and facts.

proposes to enact, will or will not amount to an abolition of the Trade? These are the two points to which the counsel who pleaded this day at your bar, on behalf of the African merchants, directed his principal attention, and they do in reality comprehend the whole of the business before us.

In his arguments on the first of these points the counsel declared, that the appellation of abuse could only be given to such a mode of conveyance as is dangerous to the lives or health of the negroes. I accept his definition, narrow as it is, and shall make it the basis of my reasoning. To the question then, is the present mode of transportation compatible with a due regard to the lives and healths of the Africans, what has been the evidence at your bar? what the language of witnesses? They told you, that five feet six inches in length, and sixteen inches in breadth, was as much as their practice, upon an average, allotted to each slave; that this space was all the room they could allow for the African and his irons, and that in order to accommodate him to this extent, which they described as liberal, recourse is had to every possible contrivance. In the first place, the lower deck is entirely covered with bodies: in the next, the heighth between the floor of that deck and the roof above (a heighth which they acknowledge seldom amounts to five feet eight inches) is divided by a platform, which is also covered with bodies. Thus the distance from the floor on which some of the Africans are laid, to the platform on which others are spread, is but

Sir W. Dolben said, they were ready to appear, and were very respectable people. Mr. Beaufoy said:-The remarks of the noble lord in support of the veracity of the witnesses whom the friends of the African Trade thought fit to call to your bar, I am not inclined to dispute. Their evidence is clear, the facts they have established are important, and the natural conclusions from these facts, however opposite to those which they intended should be drawn, are, in my judgment, decisive on the case. On this occasion two questions arise: the first is, Whether in the present mode of transporting to the West Indies the negroes which are purchased in Africa, such abuses exist as require the restrictions of law? the second is, Whether the restrictions which this Bill $

and a few inches in the rest; and from the platform to the upper deck, which constitutes the roof, there is but a similar space. The same ingenuity of package, and perfection of contrivance, is employed according to the witnesses' account, in filling every other part of the vessel in which a human body can be stowed. Such is the mode of conveyance.-Now, what from the evidence of the witnesses at your bar (an evidence given with reluctance, on a cross-examination, and therefore of decisive credibility) is the effect of that conveyance on the lives and health both of the negroes and the seamen ? "I do confess," says one of the witnesses, "that when I was master of the Tartar, I lost in one voyage a third of my seamen, and 120 negroes, which was also a third of the whole." Was this the total of your loss?

numbers crouded into a narrow space, the | suffering must be dreadful; but here again we were mistaken; so much so, indeed, that the counsel treated the very idea as ridiculously delicate and finical; and the witnesses say, that the additional warmth is the very thing which the Africans desire; they accept it as a boon; they solicit it as an enjoyment. One would think from the evidence at the bar, and from the arguments of the counsel upon it, that the solid pestilence, the thick contagion, the substantial rottenness of an African ship is congenial to the constitution, and exhilarating to the spirits of a negro. Could any thing add to the indignation we feel at such a Trade, conducted in such a way, it would be the preposterous arguments by which that Trade is defended.

Among the gentlemen who oppose this Bill, there are some who think its operation unfriendly to the interests of our West India settlements; yet, even they when they heard from the witnesses (whose testimony often acquired additional strength from the reluctance with which it was given) the ravages of this remorseless Trade, even they must, I am confident, have felt an earnest wish that the necessity of the traffic did not exist. May I then be permitted to point out to the West India settlements, not presumptuously, but with anxious and ardent wishes for their welfare, a line of conduct that would soon supersede the necessity of the negro traffic, and promote, at the same time, the interest of the planters? I think with them, that in all regulations for the remedy of evils of great magnitude and of long establishment, especially of those with the existence of which the rights of property are blended, the spirit of reform should be guided by a tempe. rate and well-advised zeal, that considers what is attainable as well as what is desirable, and confines its efforts to practicable good. I also think with them, that in all such regulations of the African Trade for negroes as are not, like those of the present Bill, confined to the mode of their conveyance, the provincial legislatures of our West-India settlements should undertake the conduct of the business. Now if, as the wisest maxims of policy suggest, those legislatures should impose a tax on every negro imported, and should grant a countervailing premium on creole negroes, born in the West Indies, and produced in a healthy state, at the age of ten years, the necessity of new im[VOL. XXVII.]

portations would speedily be removed, especially if in aid of these regulations (the efficacy of which might otherwise be retarded by negroes illicitly imported) a register of slaves should be established, and a provision made that all who are not enrolled shall be absolutely free. To the provincial assemblies who shall thus destroy the asserted necessity, and therefore the existence of the traffic in human beings, immortal honour will be due, and still more ample will be their fame should they add to the liberal policy of this measure the wise and generous expedient of raising their negroes from a state of slavery to that of regulated vassalage; they will then be revered as the distinguished instructors of their country, and the friends and benefactors of human kind.

But I have wandered too far from the immediate subject of debate. In the outset of my argument I observed, that the counsel has not only attempted to show that the sufferings of the negroes in their passage is merely ideal, and the mortality too trifling for notice, but that the present Bill, in professing to regulate, would really abolish the Trade. With what success he attempted the establishment of his first proposition I have already examined, the other remains to be considered. The Bill proposes to enact, that the number of Africans who shall be carried in any vessel shall be restricted by a rule that is founded on the joint consideration of the size of the vessel, and the accommodation with which it is furnished. A more reasonable provision, or one, perhaps, that in imposing a restraint on the eagerness of avarice, more effectually consults the interest of the merchant, is not to be found in the polity of nations. Yet to this provision the witnesses object as ruinous to their Trade; for the French, say they, our rivals, in the African commerce, will be subject to no restraint, and as the merchant best understands the nature of his own concern, and the mode of conducting it to advantage, their freedom opposed to our restrictions will give them an undoubted superiority; a superiority that will be rendered still more decisive by the bounty which the French government bestows. Such are the arguments of the counsel and the witnesses. To their first remark, "That the merchant best understands the means of commercial profit," my anwer is, that avarice, though always an eager, is not always a clearsighted and well-judging passion; for [2 Q]

under its government the probability of exorbitant loss is often risked on the slightest prospect of exorbitant gain, and therefore it is, that in the African Trade, (a lottery of the worst species) the rules of prudence are often as much neglected as the rights of humanity. On this principle, then, there is reason to believe, that the present Bill will not, on the whole, be injurious to the merchant; but even the contrary supposition is not a sufficient argument against it: for the legislature is not bound to uphold commercial profit at the expence of humanity and justice. "But the French, our ancient and inveterate rivals," says the counsel "will possess themselves of the Trade which you relinquish, and will thus succeed to one of the principal branches of your naval strength as well as of your commerce." Does then the counsel conceive us so ill informed on the subject, as not to know that the Trade to Africa has invariably proved, not the nursery, but the grave of the British seamen; and that the number of our countrymen who are yearly sacrificed to this dreadful traffic, constitute such a waste of life as no commercial gain is able to compensate? In this view of the subject then, we have no reason to dread the industry and enterprising spirit of the French. But should we admit that, in a mercantile view, the national value of the African Trade is such as the counsel has described, what proofs has he brought that, in consequence of the present Bill, that Trade will be given to our rivals? Is he not aware that of the 50,000 Africans whom our ships annually convey, not more than one half is sold for the use of our own West India settlements. That moiety therefore, if we choose to retain the Trade, is beyond the reach of hazard: for admitting that the restraints imposed should diminish the number of negroes transported in each vessel, and that the price required by the merchant for those whom he does convey should, for this reason, be somewhat raised, it follows indeed, that the cost to the British planter may be greater than at present; but it does not follow, nor is it in any respect true, that the merchants of France can seize upon the commerce. Nothing is in question, then, but that part of the Trade the least considerable of the two, which is carried on for the supply of the foreign plantations in the West Indies; and even that part of it, if the advantages of a reduced mortality be weighed, is exposed to

no other diminution than that which, independently of this Bill, may arise from the exorbitant premiums which at this time are given by the French government for the encouragement of its trade to Africa.

Hitherto I have argued on the supposition of the counsel, that the Trade to Africa will continue to receive the countenance and protection of the French, but there is reason to think, that, let the ultimate decision of the British Legislature, on this hideous traffic, be what it may, its existence among the French will speedily be abolished. Already the best and most respetable part of their great community, all their philosophers, all their men of science, all their literary men, are earnest in their wishes for its extinction; and two of the greatest ministers her government has ever known, Turgot and Neckar, have recorded their fixed abhorrence of its cruelty and guilt. A noble lord, whose judgment on this subject is undoubtedly the reverse of theirs, smiles, I observe, at the mention of literary men; but allow me to tell him, that their influence must be great in a country in which the empire of opinion is all things. Already we have seen them accomplishing more difficult events than the abolition of a traffic, which is not less disgusting to the reason, than hateful to the feeling of our nature; a traffic which exists but by human suffering, and the gains of which are constantly polluted with blood. Has the noble lord forgotten the success with which, in the persons of the two great men I have mentioned, they opposed the authority of science to the sternness of power, and the rectitude of philosophy to the corruptions of a court? Does he not know that they have actually effected what none but themselves have, at any time, ventured to attempt; for within the domains of a cruel religion, they alone have erected an altar to mercy? Does he not know that they alone have instructed their countrymen to assert their violated rights, and reclaim their ancient constitution? Does he not know that to them it is owing, that at this very hour, to the astonishment of Europe, the voice of freedom is heard in the inmost recesses of the palace? Again I repeat, that let Britain determine as she will, the guilt and infamy of this horrid traffic will not long be endured in France. Thus I have considered the various objections that have been stated to the Bill, and am ashamed to reflect that it could be neces