ts had been delivered in answer to the
queries sent them; but they were probably not in circumstances 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, to 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