rest on this commerce for the further improvement of their property?

There was a species of slavery, prevailing only a few years ago, in the
collieries in certain boroughs in Scotland. Emancipation there was
thought a duty by parliament: but what an opposition there was to the
measure! Nothing but ruin would be the consequence of it! After several
years struggle the bill was Carried. Within a year after, the ruin so
much talked of vanished in smoke, and there was an end of the business.
It had also been contended that Sir William Dolben's bill would be the
ruin of Liverpool: and yet one of its representatives had allowed, that
this bill had been of benefit to the owners of the slave-vessels there.
Was he then asking too much of the West Indians, to request a candid
consideration of the real ground of their alarms? He would conclude by
stating, that he meant to propose a middle way of proceeding. If there
was a number of members in the House, who thought with him, that this
trade ought to be ultimately abolished, but yet by moderate measures,
which should neither invade the property nor the prejudices of
individuals, he wished them to unite, and they might then reduce the
question to its proper limits.

Mr. Addington, the speaker, (now Viscount Sidmouth,) professed himself
to be one of those moderate persons called upon by Mr. Dundas. He wished
to see some middle measure suggested. The fear of doing injury to the
property of others, had hitherto prevented him from giving an opinion
against a system, the continuance of which he could not countenance.

He utterly abhorred the Slave Trade. A noble and learned lord, who had
now retired from the bench, said on a certain occasion, that he pitied
the loyalty of that man, who imagined that any epithet could aggravate
the crime of treason. So he himself knew of no language which could
aggravate the crime of the Slave Trade. It was sufficient for every
purpose of crimination, to assert, that man thereby was bought; and
sold, or that he was made subject to the despotism of man. But though he
thus acknowledged the justice due to a whole continent on the one side,
he confessed there were opposing claims of justice on the other. The
case of the West Indians deserved a tender consideration also.

He doubted, if we were to relinquish the Slave Trade alone, whether it
might not be carried on still more barbarously than at present; and
whether, if we were to stop it altogether, the is