at it was contrary to justice, humanity, and sound policy, all
of which he considered to be inseparable. On its commencement in Africa the
wickedness began. It produced there fraud and violence, robbery and murder.
It gave birth to false accusations, and a mockery of justice. It was the
parent of every crime, which could at once degrade and afflict the human
race. After spreading vice and misery all over this continent, it doomed
its unhappy victims to hardships and cruelties which were worse than death.
The first of these was conspicuous in their transportation. It was found
there, that cruelty begat cruelty; that the system, wicked in its
beginning, was equally so in its progress; and that it perpetuated its
miseries wherever it was carried on. Nor was it baneful only to the
objects, but to the promoters of it. The loss of British seamen in this
traffic was enormous. One fifth of all, who were employed in it, perished;
that is, they became the victims of a system, which was founded on fraud,
robbery, and murder; and which procured to the British nation nothing but
the execration of mankind. Nor had we yet done with the evils, which
attended it; for it brought in its train the worst of all moral effects,
not only as it respected the poor slaves, when transported to the colonies,
but as it respected those, who had concerns with them there. The arbitrary
power, which it conferred, afforded men of bad dispositions full scope for
the exercise of their passions; and it rendered men, constitutionally of
good dispositions, callous to the misery of others. Thus it depraved the
nature of all, who were connected with it. These considerations had made
him a friend to the abolition from the time he was capable of reasoning
upon it. They were considerations also, which determined the House in the
year 1782 to adopt a measure of the same kind as the present. Had any thing
happened to change the opinion of members since? On the contrary, they had
now the clearest evidence, that all the arguments then used against the
abolition were fallacious; being founded not upon truth, but on assertions
devoid of all truth, and derived from ignorance or prejudice.

Having made these remarks, he proved by a number of facts the folly of the
argument, that the Africans laboured under such a total degradation of
mental and moral faculties, that they were made for slavery.

He then entered into the great subject of population. He showed that in all
cou