as impracticable. The
abolition, on the other hand, was exactly such an agent as the case
required. All hopes of supplies from the Coast being cut off, breeding
would henceforth become a serious object of attention; and the care of
this, as including better clothing and feeding, and milder discipline,
would extend to innumerable particulars, which an act of assembly could
neither specify nor enforce. The horrible system, too, which many had gone
upon, of working out their slaves in a few years, and recruiting their
gangs with imported Africans, would receive its death-blow from the
abolition of the trade. The opposite would force itself on the most
unfeeling heart. Ruin would stare a man in the face, if he were not to
conform to it. The non-resident owners would then express themselves in the
terms of Sir Philip Gibbs, "that he should consider it as the fault of his
manager, if he were not to keep up the number of his slaves." This
reasoning concerning the different tendencies of the two systems was
self-evident. But facts were not wanting to confirm it. Mr. Long had
remarked, that all the insurrections and suicides in Jamaica had been found
among the imported slaves, who, not having lost the consciousness of civil
rights, which they had enjoyed in their own country, could not brook the
indignities to which they were subjected in the West Indies. An instance in
point was afforded also by what had lately taken place in the island of
Dominica. The disturbance there had been chiefly occasioned by some runaway
slaves from the French islands. But what an illustration was it of his own
doctrine to say, that the slaves of several persons, who had been treated,
with kindness, were not among the number of the insurgents on that
occasion!

But when persons coolly talked of putting an end to the Slave-trade through
the medium of the West India legislatures, and of gradual abolition, by
means of regulations, they surely forgot the miseries which this horrid
traffic occasioned in Africa during every moment of its continuance. This
consideration was conclusive with him, when called upon to decide whether
the Slave-trade should be tolerated for a while, or immediately abolished.
The divine law against murder was absolute and unqualified. Whilst we were
ignorant of all these things, our sanction of them might, in some measure,
be pardoned. But now, when our eyes were opened, could we tolerate them for
a moment, unless we were ready at o