ings, he must vote against the abolition, as visionary
and delusive. It was a feeble attempt without the power to serve the cause
of humanity. Other nations would take up the trade. Whenever a bill of wise
regulation should be brought forward, no man would be more ready than
himself to lend his support. In this way the rights of humanity might be
asserted without injury to others. He hoped he should not incur censure by
his vote; for, let his understanding be what it might, he did not know that
he had, notwithstanding the assertions of Mr. Fox, an inaccessible heart.

Mr. Stanley (agent for the islands) rose next. He felt himself called upon,
he said, to refute the many calumnies, which had for years been propagated
against the planters, (even through the medium of the pulpit, which should
have been employed to better purposes,) and which had at length produced
the mischievous measure, which was now under the discussion of the House. A
cry had been sounded forth, and from one end of the kingdom to the other;
as if there had never been a slave from Adam to the present time. But it
appeared to him to have been the intention of Providence, from the very
beginning, that one set of men should be slaves to another. This truth was
as old as it was universal. It was recognized in every history, under every
government, and in every religion. Nor did the Christian religion itself,
if the comments of Dr. Halifax, bishop of Gloucester, on a passage in St.
Paul's epistle to the Corinthians were true, show more repugnance to
slavery than any other.

He denied that the slaves were procured in the manner which had been
described. It was the custom of all savages to kill their prisoners; and
the Africans ought to be thankful that they had been carried safe into the
British colonies.

As to the tales of misery in the Middle Passage, they were gross
falsehoods; and as to their treatment in the West Indies, he knew
personally that it was, in general, indulgent and humane.

With regard to promoting their increase by any better mode of treatment, he
wished gentlemen would point it out to him. As a planter he would thank
them for it. It was absurd to suppose that he and others were blind to
their own interest. It was well known that one Creole slave was worth two
Africans: and their interest therefore must suggest to them that the
propagation of slaves was preferable to the purchase of imported Negros, of
whom one half very frequently died