unishments have been
changed into slavery. There being an advantage in such condemnation,
they strain the crimes very hard, in order to get the benefit of selling
the criminal. Not only murder, theft, and adultery, are punished by
selling the criminal for a slave, but every trifling crime is punished
in the same manner."

Loyer affirms that "the King of Sain, on the least pretence, sells his
subjects for European goods. He is so tyrannically severe, that he makes
a whole village responsible for the fault of one inhabitant; and on the
least offence sells them all for slaves."

Such, he said, were the testimonies, not of persons whom he had
summoned; not of friends of the abolition; but of men who were
themselves, many of them, engaged in the Slave Trade. Other testimonies
might be added; but these were sufficient to refute the assertions of
his opponents, and to show the kind services we had done to Africa by
the introduction of this trade.

He would just touch upon the argument, so often repeated, that other
nations would carry on the Slave Trade, if we abandoned it. But how did
we know this? Had not Denmark given a noble example to the contrary? She
had consented to abolish the trade in ten years; and had she not done
this, even though we, after an investigation for nearly five years, had
ourselves hung back? But what might not be expected, if we were to take
up the cause in earnest; if we were to proclaim to all nations the
injustice of the trade, and to solicit their concurrence in the
abolition of it! He hoped the representatives of the nation would not be
less just than the people. The latter had stepped forward, and expressed
their sense more generally by petitions, than in any instance in which
they had ever before interfered. To see this great cause thus triumphing
over distinctions and prejudices was a noble spectacle. Whatever might
be said of our political divisions, such a sight had taught us that
there were subjects still beyond the reach of party; that there was a
point of elevation, where we ascended above the jarring of the
discordant elements, which ruffled and agitated the vale below. In our
ordinary atmosphere clouds and vapours obscured the air, and we were the
sport of a thousand conflicting winds and adverse currents; but here we
moved in a higher region, where all was pure and clear, and free from
perturbation and discomposure:

As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,
Swells from