o speak, this
question should never be at rest. Believing the trade to be of the
nature of crimes and pollutions, which stained the honour of the
country, he would never relax his efforts. It was his duty to prevent
man from preying upon man; and if he and his friends should die before
they had attained their glorious object, he hoped there would never be
wanting men alive to their duty, who would continue to labour till the
evil should be wholly done away. If the situation of the Africans was as
happy as servitude could make them, he could not consent to the enormous
crime of selling man to man; nor permit a practice to continue, which
put an entire bar to the civilization of one quarter of the globe. He
was sure that the nation would not much longer allow the continuance of
enormities which shocked human nature. The West Indians had no right to
demand that crimes should be permitted by this country for their
advantage; and, if they were wise, they would lend their cordial
assistance to such measures, as would bring about, in the shortest
possible time, the abolition of this execrable trade.

Mr. Dundas rose again, but it was only to move an amendment, namely,
that the word "gradually" should be inserted before the words "to be
abolished" in Mr. Wilberforce's motion.

Mr. Jenkinson (afterwards Earl of Liverpool) said, that the opinions of
those who were averse to the abolition had been unfairly stated. They
had been described as founded on policy, in opposition to humanity. If
it could be made out that humanity would be aided by the abolition, he
would be the last person to oppose it. The question was not, he
apprehended, whether the trade was founded in injustice and oppression:
he admitted it was. Nor was it, whether it was in itself abstractedly an
evil: he admitted this also; but whether, under all the circumstances of
the case, any considerable advantage would arise to a number of our
fellow-creatures from the abolition of the trade in the manner in which
it had been proposed.

He was ready to admit, that the Africans at home were made miserable by
the Slave Trade, and that, if it were universally abolished, great
benefit would arise to them. No one, however, would assert, that these
miseries arose from the trade as carried on by Great Britain only. Other
countries occasioned as much of the evil as we did; and if the abolition
of it by us should prove only the transferring of it to those countries,
very little