carried on. But would the committee believe, after all the
noise which had been made on this subject, that the Slave-trade composed
but a thirtieth part of the export trade of Liverpool, and that of the
trade of Bristol it constituted a still less proportion? For the effects of
the abolition on the general commerce of the kingdom, he would refer them
to Mr. Irving; from whose evidence it would appear, that the medium value
of the British manufactures, exported to Africa, amounted only to between
four and five hundred thousand pounds annually. This was but a trifling
sum. Surely the superior capital, ingenuity, application, and integrity, of
the British manufacturer would command new markets for the produce of his
industry, to an equal amount, when this should be no more. One branch,
however, of our manufactures, he confessed, would suffer from the
abolition; and that was the manufacture of gunpowder; of which the nature
of our connection with Africa drew from us as much as we exported to all
the rest of the world besides.

He hastened, however, to another part of the argument. Some had said, "We
wish to put an end to the Slave-trade, but we do not approve of your mode.
Allow more time. Do not displease the legislatures of the West India
islands. It is by them that those laws must be passed, and enforced, which
will secure your object." Now he was directly at issue with these
gentlemen. He could show, that the abolition was the only certain mode of
amending the treatment of the slaves, so as to secure their increase; and
that the mode which had been offered to him, was at once inefficacious and
unsafe. In the first place, how could any laws, made by these legislatures,
be effectual, whilst the evidence of Negros was in no case admitted against
White men? What was the answer from Grenada? Did it not state, "that they
who were capable of cruelty, would in general be artful enough to prevent
any but slaves from being witnesses of the fact?" Hence it had arisen, that
when positive laws had been made, in some of the islands, for the
protection of the slaves, they had been found almost a dead letter.
Besides, by what law would you enter into every man's domestic concerns,
and regulate the interior economy of his house and plantation? This would
be something more than a general excise. Who would endure such a law? And
yet on all these and innumerable other minutiae must depend the protection
of the slaves, their comforts, and the