less
favourable than in the other islands.

On a full review then, of the state of the Negro population in the West
Indies, was there any serious ground of alarm from the abolition of the
Slave-trade? Where was the impracticability, on which alone so many had
rested their objections? Must we not blush at pretending, that it would
distress our consciences to accede to this measure, as far as the question
of the Negro population was concerned?

Intolerable were the mischiefs of this trade, both in its origin and
through every stage of its progress. To say that slaves could be furnished
us by fair and commercial means was ridiculous. The trade sometimes ceased,
as during the late war. The demand was more or less according to
circumstances. But how was it possible, that to a demand so exceedingly
fluctuating the supply should always exactly accommodate itself? Alas! we
made human beings the subject of commerce; we talked of them as such; and
yet we would not allow them the common principle of commerce, that the
supply must accommodate itself to the consumption. It was not from wars,
then, that the slaves were chiefly procured. They were obtained in
proportion as they were wanted. If a demand for slaves arose, a supply was
forced in one way or other; and it was in vain, overpowered as we then were
with positive evidence, as well as the reasonableness of the supposition,
to deny that by the Slave-trade we occasioned all the enormities which had
been alleged against it.

Sir William Yonge had said, that, if we were not to take the Africans from
their country, they would be destroyed. But he had not yet read, that all
uncivilized nations destroyed their captives. We assumed therefore what was
false. The very selling of them implied this: for, if they would sell their
captives for profit, why should they not employ them so as to receive a
profit also? Nay, many of them, while there was no demand from the
slave-merchants, were often actually so employed. The trade, too, had been
suspended during the war; and it was never said, or thought, that any such
consequence had then followed.

The honourable baronet had also said in justification of the Slave-trade,
that witchcraft commonly implied poison, and was therefore a punishable
crime; but did he recollect that not only the individual accused, but that
his whole family, were sold as slaves? The truth was, we stopped the
natural progress of civilization in Africa. We cut her off