hese were subject to personal
indignities and arbitrary punishments during their transportation; and that
a certain proportion of them, owing to suffocation and other cruel causes,
uniformly perished? He averred, that nothing like the African Slave-trade
was ever practised in any nation upon earth.

If the trade then was repugnant, as he maintained it was, to justice and
humanity, he did not see how, without aiding and abetting injustice and
inhumanity, any man could sanction it: and he thought that the noble baron
(Hawkesbury) was peculiarly bound to support the resolution; for he had
admitted that if it could be shown, that the trade was contrary to these
principles, the question would be at an end. Now this contrariety had been
made apparent, and his lordship had not even attempted to refute it.

He would say but little on the subject of revealed religion, as it related
to this question, because the reverend prelate, near him, had spoken so
fully upon it. He might observe, however, that at the end of the sixth
year, when the Hebrew slave was emancipated, he was to be furnished
liberally from the flock, the floor, and the wine-press of his master.

Lord Holland lamented the unfaithfulness of the noble baron (Hawkesbury) to
his own principles, and the inflexible opposition of the noble earl
(Westmoreland), from both which circumstances he despaired for ever of any
assistance from them to this glorious cause. The latter wished to hear
evidence on the subject, for the purpose, doubtless, of delay. He was sure,
that the noble earl did not care what the evidence would say on either
side; for his mind was made up, that the trade ought not to be abolished.

The noble earl had made a difference between humanity, justice, and sound
policy. God forbid, that we should ever admit such distinctions in this
country! But he had gone further, and said, that a thing might be inhuman,
and yet not unjust; and he put the case of the execution of a criminal in
support of it. Did he not by this position confound all notions of right
and wrong in human institutions? When a criminal was justly executed, was
not the execution justice to him who suffered, and humanity to the body of
the people at large?

The noble earl had said also, that we should do no good by the abolition,
because other nations would not concur in it. He did not know what other
nations would do; but this he knew, that we ourselves ought not to be
unjust because they sho