orality
was this? The Trade was defensible upon no other principle than that of
a highwayman. Great Britain could not keep it upon these terms. Mere
gain was not a motive for a great country to rest on, as a justification
of any measure. Honour was its superior; and justice was superior to
honour.

With regard to the emancipation of those in slavery, he coincided with
Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt; and upon this principle, that it might be
as dangerous to give freedom at once to a man used to slavery, as, in
the case of a man who had never seen day-light, to expose him all at
once to the full glare of a meridian sun.

With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was
pride only, which suggested a difference between them and ourselves.
There was a remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which
he would quote. In one of the slave-ships was a person of consequence; a
man, once high in a military station, and with a mind not insensible to
the eminence of his rank. He had been taken captive and sold; and was
then in the hold, confined promiscuously with the rest. Happening in the
night to fall asleep, he dreamed that he was in his own country; high in
honour and command; caressed by his family and friends; waited on by his
domestics; and surrounded with all his former comforts in life. But
awaking suddenly, and finding where he was, he was heard to burst into
the loudest groans and lamentations on the miserable contrast of his
present state; mixed with the meanest of his subjects; and subjected to
the insolence of wretches a thousand times lower than himself in every
kind of endowment. He appealed to the House, whether this was not as
moving a picture of the miserable effects of the Slave Trade, as could
be well imagined. There was one way, by which they might judge of it.
Let them make the case their own. This was the Christian rule of
judging; and, having mentioned Christianity, he was sorry to find that
any should suppose, that it had given countenance to such a system of
oppression. So far was this from being the case, that he thought it one
of the most splendid triumphs of this religion, that it had caused
slavery to be so generally abolished on its appearance in the world. It
had done this by teaching us, among other beautiful precepts, that, in
the sight of their Maker, all mankind were equal. Its influence appeared
to have been more powerful in this respect than that of all the ancien