goods, at length staked themselves, their wives, and their children." Now every one of these sources of slavery had been stated to be at this hour a source of slavery in Africa. If these practices, therefore, were to be admitted as proofs of the natural incapacity of its inhabitants, why might they not have been applied to ancient Britain? Why might not then some Roman senator, pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, that these were a people who were destined never to be free; who were without the understanding necessary for the attainment of useful arts; depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, and created to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the world? But happily, since that time, notwithstanding what would then have been the justness of these predictions, we had emerged from barbarism. We were now raised to a situation which exhibited a striking contrast to every circumstance by which a Roman might have characterized us, and by which we now characterized Africa. There was, indeed, one thing wanting to complete the contrast, and to clear us altogether from the imputation of acting even to this hour as barbarians; for we continued to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves. We continued it even yet, in spite of all our great pretensions. We were once as obscure among the nations of the earth, as savage in our manners, as debased in our morals, as degraded in our understandings as these unhappy Africans. But in the lapse of a long series of years, by a progression slow, and for a time almost imperceptible, we had become rich in a variety of acquirements. We were favored above measure in the gifts of Providence, we were unrivaled in commerce, preeminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we were in the possession of peace, of liberty, and of happiness; we were under the guidance of a mild and a beneficent religion; and we were protected by impartial laws, and the purest administration of justice; we were living under a system of government, which our own happy experience led us to pronounce the best and wisest, and which had become the admiration of the world. From all these blessings we must forever have been excluded had there been any truth in those principles which some had not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa; and we should have been, at this moment, little superior, either in morals, knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of that continent.

If, then, we felt that this perpetual confinement in the fetters of brutal ignorance would have been the greatest calamity which could have befallen us; if we viewed with gratitude the contrast between our present and our former situation; if we shuddered to think of the misery which would still have overwhelmed us, had our country continued to the present times, through some cruel policy, to be the mart for slaves to the more civilized nations of the world; God forbid that we should any longer subject Africa to the same dreadful scourge, and exclude that light of knowledge from her coasts which had reached every other quarter of the globe!

He trusted we should no longer continue this commerce; and that we should no longer consider ourselves as conferring too great a boon on the natives of

Africa, in restoring them to the rank of human beings. He trusted we should not think ourselves too liberal, if, by abolishing the slave-trade, we gave them the same common chance of civilization with other parts of the world. If we listened to the voice of reason and duty this night, some of us might live to see a reverse of that picture, from which we now turn our eyes with shame. We might live to behold the natives engaged in the calm occupations of industry, and in the pursuit of a just commerce. We might behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon their land, which at some happy period in some later times might blaze with full lustre; and joining their influence to that of pure religion, might illuminate and invigorate the most distant extremities of that immense continent. Then might we hope that even Africa, though last of all the quarters of the globe, should enjoy at length, in the evening of her days, those blessings which had descended so plentifully upon us in a much earlier period of the world. Then also would Europe, participating in her improvement and prosperity, receive an ample recompense for the tardy kindness (if kindness it could be called) of no longer hindering her from extricating herself out of the darkness, which, in other more fortunate regions, had been so much more speedily dispelled.

It was in this view, it was as an atonement for our long and cruel injustice towards Africa that the measure proposed by his honorable friend, Mr. Wilberforce, most forcibly recommended itself to his mind. The great and happy change to be expected in the state of her inhabitants was, of all the various benefits of the abolition, in his estimation the most extensive and important. He should vote against the adjournment, and he should also oppose every proposition which tended to prevent or even to postpone for an hour the total abolition of the slave-trade.

Two divisions took place. In the first there were 193 votes for gradual abolition, and 125 for immediate; and in the second there were 230 for gradual, and 85 for no abolition at all. On the 25th of April, Mr. Dundas brought forward a plan conformable with the resolutions of the house above mentioned. He considered that eight years ought to be allowed the planters to stock themselves with negroes, and therefore moved that the year 1800 should be the epoch, after which no more slaves should be imported from Africa in British vessels to the West Indies. Sir Edward Knatchbull proposed the year 1796, which motion was carried by 151 to 132.

After the debate, the committee for the abolition of the slave-trade held a meeting and voted their thanks to Mr. Wilberforce for his motion, and to Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, and those other members of the house who had so eloquently supported it. They resolved, also, that a gradual abolition of the slave-trade was not an adequate remedy for its injustice and cruelty; neither could it be deemed a compliance with the general wishes of the people, as expressed in their numerous and urgent petitions to parliament; and they resolved, lastly, to use all constitutional means to obtain its immediate abolition.

CHAPTER XV.

PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY.-SLAVE TRADE RENDERED ILLEGAL.

Action of the House of Lords in 1792.-Clarkson retires from the field from ill health, in 1794.-Mr. Wilberforce's annual motion.-Session of 1799.-Speech of Canning.Sessions of 1804 and 1805.-Clarkson resumes his labors.-Death of Mr. Pitt, January, 1806.-Administration of Grenville and Fox.-Session of 1806.-Debate in the House of Lords. Speeches of Lord Grenville, Erskine, Dr. Porteus, Earls Stanhope and Spencer, Lords Holland and Ellenborough.-Death of Fox, October, 1806.-Contest and triumph in 1807.-Final passage of the Bill for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Slave trade declared felony in 1811, and declared piracy in 1824, by England. England abolishes slavery in her colonies, 1833.-Prohibition of Slave Trade by European governments.-Slavery abolished in Mexico, 1829-In Guatemala and Colombia.

THE gradual abolition having been thus agreed upon for 1796, by the house

of commons, a committee carried the resolution to the house of lords. On the 8th of May, 1792, the lords met to consider it, when a motion was made by Lord Stormont, on the part of the planters, merchants, and other interested persons, to hear new evidence. On the 5th of June, when only seven witnesses had been examined, all further proceedings were postponed to the next session. Nothing could be more distressing to the friends of the measure than this determination of the lords; first, because there was no knowing how many years they might prolong the hearing of evidence; and secondly, it involved the necessity of finding out and keeping up a respectable body of witnesses on the side of the opponents of the trade. Mr. Clarkson, therefore, set out again in the month of July on his old errand, and returned in February, 1793. The house of commons was then sitting. The only step to be taken was to bring forward its own vote of the former year, by which the slave-trade was to be abolished in 1796, in order that this vote might be reconsidered and renewed. This motion, made by Mr. Wilberforce, was furiously opposed, and lost by a majority of 61 to 53. By this determination the commons actually refused to sanction their own vote. In the house of lords, but seven witnesses were examined during this session.

He

Mr. Clarkson once more traversed the kingdom in search of witnesses. returned in February, 1794, but in such a wretched state of health as to be unable to lend any farther assistance to the committee. The incessant labor of body and mind for so many years, aggravated by anxiety and disappointments, had made a serious inroad upon his constitution. His nervous system had been shattered, his hearing, voice, and memory were nearly gone. He was therefore obliged, very reluctantly, to be borne out of the field, where he had placed the great honor and glory of his life. Mr. Clarkson says: "These disorders had been brought on by degrees in consequence of the severe labors necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause. For seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred persons with my own and. I had some book or other annually to write in behalf of the cause. In this time I had traveled more than thirty-five thousand miles in search of evidence, and a

great part of these journeys in the night. All this time my mind had been on the stretch. It had been bent, too, to this one subject; for I had not even leisure to attend to my own concerns. The various instances of barbarity which had come successively to my knowledge, within this period, had vexed, harassed, and afflicted it. The wound which these had produced was rendered still deeper by those cruel disappointments before related, which arose from the reiterated refusal of persons to give their testimony, after I had traveled hundreds of miles in quest of them. But the severest stroke was that inflicted by the persecution begun and pursued by persons interested in the continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined against them; and whom, on account of their dependent situations in life, it was most easy to oppress. As I had been the means of bringing these forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when thus persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin. From their supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and ungrateful to have fled. The late Mr. Whitbread, to whom one day in deep affliction on this account I related accidentally a circumstance of this kind, generously undertook, in order to make my mind easy upon the subject, to make good all injuries which should in future arise to individuals from such persecution; and he repaired these, at different times, at a considerable expense. I feel it a duty to divulge this circumstance, out of respect to the memory of one of the best of men, and of one whom, if the history of his life were written, it would appear to have been an extraordinary honor to the country to have produced."

In the session of 1795, Mr. Wilberforce moved for leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade. The motion was lost by a small majority. In 1796, Mr. Wilberforce resolved to try the question in a new shape. He moved that the trade be abolished in a limited time, but without assigning to its duration any specific date. He wished the house to agree to this as a general principle. After much opposition, the principle was acknowledged; but when, in consequence of this acknowledgment of it, he brought in a bill and attempted to introduce into one of its clauses, the year 1797, as the period when the trade should cease, he lost it by a majority of 74 to 70. He allowed the next session to pass without any parliamentary notice of the subject, but in 1798 he renewed his motion for a limited time, which was lost.

In the year 1799, undismayed by these different disappointments, he again renewed his motion. Colonel M. Wood, Mr. Petrie, and others, among whom were Mr. Windham and Mr. Dundas, opposed it. Messrs. Pitt, Fox, W. Smith, Sir William Dolben, Sir R. Milbank, Mr. Hobhouse, and Mr. Canning, supported it. Sir R. Milbank contended that modifications of a system fundamentally wrong ought not to be tolerated by the legislature of a free nation. Mr. Hobhouse said that nothing could be so nefarious as this 'raffic in blood. It was unjust in its principle. It was cruel in its practice. It admitted of no regulation whatever. The abolition of it was called for equally by morality and sound policy.

Mr. Canning exposed the folly of Mr. Dun las, who had said that as parlia

But

ment had in the year 1787 left the abolition to the colonial assemblies, it ought not to be taken out of their hands. This great event, he observed, could only be accomplished in two ways; either by these assemblies, or by the parliament of England. Now the members of the assembly of Jamaica had professed that they would never abolish the trade. Was it not therefore idle to rely upon them for the accomplishment of it? He then took a very comprehensive view of the arguments which had been offered in the course of the debate, and was severe upon the planters in the house, who, he said, had brought into familiar use certain expressions with no other view than to throw a veil over their odious system. Among these was their right to import laborers. never was the word "laborers" so prostituted as when it was used for slaves. Never was the word "right" so prostituted, not even when The Rights of Man were talked of, as when the right to trade in man's blood was asserted by the members of an enlightened assembly. Never was the right of importing these laborers worse defended than when the antiquity of the slave-trade, and its foundation on ancient acts of parliament, were brought forward in its support. We had been cautioned not to lay our unhallowed hands on the ancient institution of the slave-trade; nor to subvert a fabric raised by the wisdom of our ancestors, and consecrated by a lapse of ages. But on what principles did we usually respect the institutions of antiquity? We respected them when we saw some shadow of departed worth and usefulness, or some memorial of what had been creditable to mankind. But was this the case with the slavetrade? Had it begun in principles of justice or national honor, which the changes of the world alone had impaired? Had it to plead former services and glories in behalf of its present disgrace? In looking at it we saw nothing but crimes and sufferings from the beginning; nothing but what wounded and convulsed our feelings; nothing but what excited indignation and horror. It had not even to plead what could often be said in favor of the most unjustifiable wars. Though conquest had sometimes originated in ambition, and in the worst of motives, yet the conquerors and the conquered were sometimes blended afterwards into one people; so that a system of common interest arose out of former differences. But where was the analogy of the cases? Was it only at the outset that we could trace violence and injustice on the part of the slave-trade? Were the oppressors and the oppressed so reconciled that enmities ultimately ceased? No. Was it reasonable, then, to urge a prescriptive right, not to the fruits of an ancient and forgotten evil, but to a series of new violences; to a chain of fresh enormities; to cruelties continually repeated; and of which every instance inflicted a fresh calamity, and constituted a separate and substantial crime?

The debate being over, the house divided; when it appeared that there were for Mr. Wilberforce's motion seventy-four, but against it eighty-two.

The question had now been tried and lost in almost every possible shape, but Mr. Wilberforce and the committee resolved to hold themselves in readiness to seize the first favorable opportunity which should present itself of furthering the cause. Four years passed over without action, rut the year 1804