estate by means
of the purchase of new slaves, the measure invariably tended to his
destruction. What then was the importation of fresh Africans but a system,
tending to the general ruin of the islands?

But it had often been said, that without fresh importations the population
of the slaves could not be supported in the islands. This, however, was a
mistake. It had arisen from reckoning the deaths of the imported Africans,
of whom so many were lost in the seasoning, among the deaths of the
Creole-slaves. He did not mean to say, that under the existing degree of
misery the population would greatly increase; but he would maintain, that,
if the deaths and the births were calculated upon those, who were either
born, or who had been a long time in the islands, so as to be considered as
natives, it would be found that the population had not only been kept up,
but that it had been increased.

If it was true, that the labour of a free man was cheaper than that of a
slave; and also that the labour of a long imported slave was cheaper than
that of a fresh imported one; and again, that the chances of mortality were
much more numerous among the newly imported slaves in the West Indies, than
among those of old standing there (propositions, which he took to be
established), we should see new arguments for the impolicy of the trade.

It might be stated also, that the importation of vast bodies of men, who
had been robbed of their rights, and grievously irritated on that account,
into our colonies (where their miserable condition opened new sources of
anger and revenge), was the importation only of the seeds of insurrection
into them. And here he could not but view with astonishment the reasoning
of the West Indian planters, who held up the example of St. Domingo as a
warning against the abolition of the Slave-trade; because the continuance
of it was one of the great causes of the insurrections and subsequent
miseries in that devoted island. Let us but encourage importations in the
same rapid progression of increase every year, which took place in St.
Domingo, and we should witness the same effect in our own islands.

To expose the impolicy of the trade further, he would observe, that it was
an allowed axiom, that as the condition of man was improved, he became more
useful. The history of our own country, in very early times, exhibited
instances of internal slavery, and this to a considerable extent. But we
should find that precise