continuance, they must have nerves of which he had no conception. We might find instances, indeed, in history, of men violating the feelings of nature on extraordinary occasions. Fathers had sacrificed their sons and daughters, and husbands their wives; but to imitate their characters, we ought to have not only nerves as strong as the two Brutuses, but to take care that we had a cause as good; or that we had motives for such a dereliction of our feelings as patriotic as those which historians had attributed to these when they handed them to the notice of the world.

But what was our motive in the case before us, to continue a trade which was a wholesale sacrifice of a whole order and race of our fellow-creatures? which carried them away by force from their native country, in order to subject them to the mere will and caprice, the tyranny and oppression of other human beings, for their whole natural lives, them and their posterity for ever! O most monstrous wickedness! O unparalleled barbarity! And, what was more aggravating, this most complicated scene of robbery and murder which mankind had ever witnessed, had been honored by the name of trade.

That a number of human beings should be at all times ready to be furnished as fair articles of commerce, just as our occasions might require, was absurd. The argument of Mr. Pitt, on this head, was unanswerable. Our demand was fluctuating; it entirely ceased at some times; at others it was great and pressing. How was it possible, on every sudden call, to furnish a sufficient return in slaves without resorting to those execrable means of obtaining them which were stated in the evidence? These were of three sorts, and he would now examine them.

Captives in war, it was urged, were consigned either to death or slavery. This, however, he believed to be false in point of fact. But suppose it were true; did it not become us, with whom it was a custom, founded in the wisest policy, to pay the captives a peculiar respect and civility, to inculcate the same principles in Africa? But we were so far from doing this, that we encouraged wars for the sake of taking, not men's goods and possessions, but men themselves; and it was not the war which was the cause of the slavetrade, but the slave-thrade which was the cause of the war. It was the practice of the slave-merchants to try to intoxicate the African kings in order to turn them to their purpose. A particular instance occurred in the evidence of a prince, who, when sober, resisted their wishes; but in the moment of inebriety, he gave the word for war, attacked the next village, and sold the inhabitants to the merchants.

The second mode was kidnapping. He referred the house to various instances of this in the evidence: but there was one in particular, from which we might immediately infer the frequency of the practice. A black trader had kidnapped a girl and sold her; but he was presently afterwards kidnapped and sold himself; and, when he asked the captain who bought him, "What! do you buy me, who am a great trader?" the only answer was, "Yes, I will buy you, or her, or any body else, provided any one will sell you;" and accordingly both the trader and the girl were carried to the West Indies and sold for slaves.

The third mode of obtaining slaves was by crimes committed or imputed. One of these was adultery. But was Africa the place, where Englishmen, above all others, were to go to find out and punish adulterers? Did it become us to cast the first stone? It was a most extraordinary pilgrimage for a most extraordinary purpose! And yet upon this plea we justified our right of carrying off its inhabitants. The offense alleged next was witchcraft. What a reproach it was to lend ourselves to this superstition! Yes: we stood by; we heard the trial; we knew the crime to be impossible, and that the accused. must be innocent: but we waited in patient silence for his condemnation; and then we lent our friendly aid to the police of the country, by buying the wretched convict, with all his family, whom, for the benefit of Africa, we carried away, also, into perpetual slavery.

Of the slaves in the West Indies it had been said that they were taken from a worse state to a better. An honorable member, Mr. William Smith, had quoted some instances out of the evidence to the contrary. He also would quote one or two others. A slave under hard usage had run away. To prevent a repetition of the offense his owner sent for his surgeon, and desired him to cut off the man's leg. The surgeon refused. The owner, to render it a matter of duty in the surgeon, broke it. "Now," says he, "you must cut it off, or the man will die." We might console ourselves, perhaps, that this happened in a French island; but he would select another instance which had happened in one of our own. Mr. Ross heard the shrieks of a female issuing from an out-house, and so piercing that he determined to see what was going on. On looking in he perceived a young female tied up to a beam by her wrists, entirely naked, and in the act of involuntary writhing and swinging, while the author of her torture was standing below her with a lighted torch in his hand, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he knew not; but the human mind could not conceive a crime warranting such a punishment.

He was glad to see that these tales affected the house. Would they then sanction enormities, the bare recital of which made them shudder? Let them remember that humanity did not consist in a squeamish ear. It did not consist in shrinking and starting at such tales as these; but in a disposition of the heart to remedy the evils they unfolded. Humanity belonged rather to the mind than to the nerves. But if so, it should prompt men to charitable exertion. Such exertion was necessary in the present case. It was necessary for the credit of our jurisprudence at home and our character abroad. For what would any man think of our justice who should see another hanged for a crime which would be innocence itself, if compared with those enormities which were allowed in Africa and the West Indies under the sanction of the British parliament.

With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was pride only which suggested a difference between them and ourselves. There was a remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which he would quote. In one of the slave-ships was a person of consequence, a man once high in

a military station, and with a mind not insensible to the eminence of his rank. He had been taken captive and sold, and was then in the hold, confined promiscuously with the rest. Happening in the night to fall asleep, he dreamed that he was in his own country, high in honor and command, caressed by his family and friends, waited on by his domestics, and surrounded with all his former comforts in life. But awaking suddenly and finding where he was, he was heard to burst into the loudest groans and lamentations on the miserable contrast of his present state, mixed with the meanest of his subjects, and subjected to the insolence of wretches a thousand times lower than himself in every kind of endowment. He appealed to the house, whether this was not

as moving a picture of the miserable effects of the slave-trade as could be well imagined. There was one way by which they might judge of it. Let them make the case their own. This was the Christian rule of judging; and having mentioned Christianity, he was sorry to find that any should suppose that it had given countenance to such a system of oppression. So far was this from being the case, that he thought it one of the most splendid triumphs of this religion, that it had caused slavery to be so generally abolished on its appearance in the world. It had done this by teaching us, among other beautiful precepts, that in the sight of their Maker, all mankind were equal. Its influence appeared to have been more powerful in this respect than that of all the ancient systems of philosophy; though even in these, in point of theory, we might trace great liberality and consideration for human rights. Where could be found finer sentiments of liberty than in Demosthenes and Cicero ? Where bolder assertions of the rights of mankind than in Tacitus and Thucydides? But alas! these were the holders of slaves! It was not so with those who had been converted to Christianity.

He would now conclude by declaring that the whole country, indeed the whole civilized world, must rejoice that such a bill as the present had been moved for, not merely as a matter of humanity, but as an act of justice; for he would put humanity out of the case. Could it be called humanity to forbear from committing murder? Exactly upon this ground did the present motion stand, being strictly a question of national justice. He thanked Mr. Wilberforce for having pledged himself so strongly to pursue his object till it was accomplished; and, as for himself, he declared, that in whatever situation he might ever be, he would use his warmest efforts for the promotion of this righteous cause.

Mr. Stanley (the member for Lancashire) rose, and declared that when he came into the house, he intended to vote against the abolition; but that the impression made both on his feelings and on his understanding was such, that he could not persist in his resolution. He was now convinced that the entire abolition of the slave-trade was called for equally by sound policy and justice He thought it right and fair to avow manfully this change in his opinion. The abolition, he was sure, could not long fail of being carried. The arguments for it were irresistible.

The Honorable Mr. Ryder said that he came to the house, not exactly in