the nature of the human mind, they will here be of no avail.

Nor, as you must have already collected, can they have all that effect which has sometimes been supposed even in preventing the mortality. I do not, indeed, deny that the regulating act has lessened this mortality, but not in the degree in which it is generally imagined; and even in the last year I know the deaths on shipboard will be found to have been between ten and eleven per cent. on the whole number that was exported. In truth, you cannot reach the cause of this mortality by all your regulations. Until you can cure a broken heart, until you can legislate for the affections, and bind by your statutes the passions and feelings of the mind, you will in vain sit here devising rules and orders: your labour will be nugatory you cannot make these poor creatures live against their will: in spite of all you can do they will elude your regulations; they will mock your ordinances and triumph, as they have already done, in escaping out of your hands.

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Ó, sir! are not these things too bad to be any longer endured? I cannot but persuade myself that whatever difference of opinion there may have been, we shall this night be at length unanimous. I cannot believe that a British house of commons will give its sanction to the continuance of this infernal traffick. We were for awhile ignorant of its real nature; but it has now been completely developed, and laid to your view in all its horrours. Never was there, indeed, a system so big with wickedness and cruelty: to whatever part of it you direct your view, whether to Africa, the middle passage, or the West Indies, the eye finds no comfort, no satisfaction, no relief. It is the gracious ordinance of Providence, both in the natural and moral world, that good should often arise out of evil. Hurricanes clear the air, and the propagation of truth is promoted by persecution: pride, vanity, profusion, in their remoter consequences contribute often to the happiness of mankind; in common what is in itself evil and vitious, is permitVOL. V.,

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ted to carry along with it some circumstances of palliation; even those descriptions of men that may seem most noxious have often some virtues belonging to their order. The Arab is hospitable. The robber is brave. We do not necessarily find cruelty associated with fraud, or meanness with injustice. But here the case is far otherwise. It is the prerogative of this detested traffick to separate from evil its concomitant good, and reconcile discordant mishiefs; it robs war of its generosity; it deprives peace of its security. You have the vices of polished society without its knowledge or its comforts; and the evils of barbarism without its simplicity. Nor are its ravages restricted as those of other evils to certain limits either of extent or continuance; in the latter it is constant and unintermitted; in the former it is universal and indiscriminate. No age, no sex, no rank, no condition is exempt from the fatal influence of this wide wasting calamity! Thus, it attains to the fullest measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable preeminence.

Such being the true character of that abhorred system which I this night call upon you to abolish, it would, I think, be matter of inexpressible astonishment to any one, who being new to the discussion of this subject, should be told for the first time, that it had been sometimes attempted to be defended on the ground of humanity and benevolence. I do not

know that it is necessary to urge any thing in reply to this strange argument, and I doubt whether any man possessed of all the powers of eloquence could make its absurdity appear more strongly than by simply stating it, and leaving it to itself. To honour it, however, with somewhat more particular attention than it deserves; it has been said that the slaves we take are captives and convicts, who, if we were not to carry them away, would all be butchered, and many of them sacrificed at the funerals of people of rank, according to the savage custom of Africa. Now, here,

I beg it may be observed in the first place, that this argument applies only to the case of those slaves who are prisoners of war and convicts, and what I have already said must have convinced the committee, how much of our supply is derived from other sources. And were it even true that you saved all of these two descriptions of people from certain death, these advocates for humanity would not have much on which to congratulate themselves, would they but estimate the total waste of the species which resulted from this exercise of their philanthropy.

But this plea, miserable as it would be if it were true, is altogether false and groundless. I could prove it so by a thousand quotations if I were not afraid of trespassing on the patience of the committee: you have but to glance on the evidence, and find it acknowledged by our opponents themselves, that the custom of ransoming prisoners of war prevails in Africa; and as for what has been said of human sacrifices, I do not deny that there have been some instances of these; but they have been by no means proved more numerous or frequent than amongst other barbarous nations; and where they exist, being acts of religion in order to quiet the manes of the deceased chieftain, they would probably not be waved for the sake of a little commercial advantage. In the very instance of the king of Dahomey, which has been so much insisted on, one of the most intelligent and strenuous of the witnesses against the abolition declared he believed that if the convicts should fall short for these sacrifices, the requisite number would be supplied by innocent people who would be seized for that purpose: so that admitting even the truth of your own assertion, you bring away such as have deserved to suffer, in order to leave the innocent to be sacrificed in their stead.

But if not sacrificed, the slaves, if we were to refuse to buy them, would be destroyed. To this assertion also we can oppose not only the reason of the thing, but abundant, complete, indisputable testimony. In fact nothing can be more ridiculous than the

grounds on which it has been asserted that the refused slaves are destroyed or sacrificed. I will mention to the committee a single instance or two as a specimen of the rest; it is to be found in the evidence of captain Frazer. I was curious to discover how a person declared to be in general a man of an amiable temper, could reconcile it to his principles and feelings to carry on the slave trade. The solution was furnished me when I found that he had imbibed this notion of the unhappy fate of the refused slaves. Considering that he himself told us of other modes wherein they were disposed of in various places, I thought him a little unreasonable in this opinion: however, he frankly gave us the grounds of it. I must beg the committee to hear them in his own words: "I had a Cabenda boy with me as a linguist, who informed me, one evening, that a slave, whom I would not purchase, was put to death in the following manner : the owner of this slave who came from the inland country, as I was informed, called the traders and fishermen together under a large tree. He told them that the slave whom the white man would not buy, had run away from him several times in his own country. He accused him of dishonesty. He declared that by the custom of that country, every man that met a runaway slave was obliged to bring him back to his master, for which the master was obliged to pay him. He said that this slave run away three times from him that he paid more for bringing him back than he was worth: that he derived no benefit from his labour; that he had offered him to a white man, who refused to purchase him at the price he asked: that he was determined to put him to death to prevent the necessity of paying any more for bringing him back, and as an example to the rest of his slaves."

He then recites the particulars of the mode wherein the owner proceeded to the execution of his purpose. But can any thing be more unfair than to urge this as a proof that refused slaves in general are put to death? It seems almost as if the owner of this boy had been

on his guard to prevent the possibility of such a construction: he does not act like a man who thinks he may take away the life of his slave on the mere impulse of his own caprice; but he is solicitous not to subject himself to such an imputation. He is anxious to justify himself to the surrounding natives, who might otherwise resent his conduct. He accordingly convenes them for that purpose, and explains at large the grounds of his proceeding. Another instance is mentioned by captain Frazer, wherein a sucking child was about to be put to death, if he had not humanely rescued it by the offer of a jug of brandy. But he has himself furnished you with an explanation of this incident; and on reading it a little further you find that it was the child of a woman who had been purchased the same day by another captain. Captain Frazer carried the child on board and restored it to its mother, who went on her knees and kissed his feet.

But leaving this topick of the massacre of refused slaves, it is added by the same votaries of humanity, that the general state of things in Africa is such, that the slave trade cannot render it worse; that it is kindness to the inhabitants of that country to take them out of it. In short, that instead of being the worst enemies as I have stated, we have been in fact the benefactors of the Africans. This is a part of the subject on which very mistaken notions have prevailed, and I beg leave to read certain extracts I have made with relation to it; they are many of them selected from the publication of my noble friend which I before referred to.

From these it will appear that the state of things in Africa is by no means so barbarous as has been represented, and that the situation of those who are in the condition of slaves themselves, is in no degree a state of hardship and degradation. Axim, says Bosman, is cultivated, and abounds with numerous large and beautiful villages; its inhabitants are industriously employed in trade, fishing, or agriculture; they export rice to all the Gold Coast." "There is a great number of fine populous villages on the