at last successful; and he
gained for the British the noblest triumph ever gained for a nation
over its own habits, its selfishness, its pride, and its popular
opinion.

But the manner in which this great redemption of national character
was effected, did less honour to the wisdom of the cabinet than to the
benevolence of the people. Fox, probably sincere, but certainly
headlong, rushed into emancipation as he had rushed into every measure
that bore the name of popularity. Impatient of the delay which might
take the honour of this crowning act out of the hands of his
party--and unquestionably, in any shape, it was an honour to any
party--he hurried it forward without securing the concert, or
compelling the acquiescence, of any one of the European kingdoms
engaged in the slave-trade. It is true that England was then at war
with them all; but there was thus only the stronger opportunity of
pronouncing the national resolve, never to tolerate the commerce in
slaves, and never to receive any country into our protection by which
that most infamous of all trades was tolerated. The opportunity was
amply given for establishing the principle, in the necessity which
every kingdom in succession felt for the aid of England, and the
abolition ought to have been the first article of the treaty. But the
occasion was thrown away.

The parliamentary regulations, which had largely provided for the
comfort of the slaves on the passage from Africa, and their protection
in the British colonies, could not be extended to the new and
tremendous traffic which was engaged in by all the commercial states
of Europe and the West. The closing of the British mart of slavery
flooded the African shore with desperate dealers in the flesh and
blood of man; whose only object was profit, and who regarded the
miseries of the African only as they affected his sale. The ships
which, by the British regulations, had been suffered to carry only a
number limited to their accommodation, were now crowded with wretches,
stowed in spaces that scarcely allowed them to breathe. The cheapness
of the living cargo, produced by the withdrawal of the British from
the slave coast, excited the activity, almost the fury, of the trade;
and probably 100,000 miserable beings were thus annually dragged from
their own country, to undergo the labour of brutes, and die the death
of brutes in the Western World.

Another source of evil was added to the original crime. The colonial