inference from this
moderate assertion, but that we might as well supply them ourselves? He
hoped, if we were yet to be supplied, it would never be by Englishmen.
We ought no longer to be concerned in such a crime.

An adversary, Mr. Baillie, had said, that it would not be fair to take
the character of this country from the records of the Old Bailey. He did
not at all wonder, when the subject of the Slave Trade was mentioned,
that the Old Bailey naturally occurred to his recollection. The facts,
which had been described in the evidence, were associated in all our
minds with the ideas of criminal justice. But Mr. Baillie had forgot the
essential difference between the two cases. When we learnt from these
records, that crimes were committed in this country, we learnt also,
that they were punished with transportation and death. But the crimes
committed in the Slave Trade were passed over with impunity. Nay, the
perpetrators were even sent out again to commit others.

As to the mode of obtaining slaves, it had been suggested as the least
disreputable, that they became so in consequence of condemnation as
criminals. But he would judge of the probability of this mode by the
reasonableness of it. No less than eighty thousand Africans were
exported annually by the different nations of Europe from their own
country. Was it possible to believe that this number could have been
legally convicted of crimes, for which they had justly forfeited their
liberty? The supposition was ridiculous. The truth was, that every
enormity was practised to obtain the persons of these unhappy people; He
referred those present to the case in the evidence of the African
trader, who had kidnapped and sold a girl, and who was afterwards
kidnapped and sold himself. He desired them to reason upon the
conversation which had taken place between the trader and the captain of
the ship on this occasion. He desired them also to reason upon the
instance mentioned this evening, which had happened in the river
Cameroons, and they would infer all the rapine, all the desolation, and
all the bloodshed, which had been placed to the account of this
execrable trade.

An attempt had been made to impress the House with the horrible scenes
which had taken place in St. Domingo, as an argument against the
abolition of the Slave Trade; but could any more weighty argument be
produced in its favour? What were the causes of the insurrections there?
They were two. The first was