benefit would result from the measure.

What then was the probability of our example being followed by foreign
powers? Five years had now elapsed since the question was first started,
and what had any of them done? The Portuguese continued the trade. The
Spaniards still gave a bounty to encourage it. He believed there were
agents from Holland in this country, who were then negotiating with
persons concerned in it in order to secure its continuance. The
abolition also had been proposed in the National Assembly of France, and
had been rejected there. From these circumstances he had a right to
infer, that if we gave up the trade, we should only transfer it to those
countries: but this transfer would be entirely against the Africans. The
mortality on board English ships, previously to the regulating bill, was
four and an-eighth per cent. Since that time it had been reduced to
little more than three per cent[A]. In French ships it was near ten, and
in Dutch ships from five to seven, per cent. In Portuguese it was less
than either in French or Dutch, but more than in English ships since the
regulating bill. Thus the deaths of the Africans would be more than
doubled, if we were to abolish the trade.

[Footnote A: Mr. Wilberforce stated it on the same evening to be between
ten and eleven per cent. for the last year. The number then exported
from Africa to our islands was rather more than 22,000, of whom more
than 2,300 died.]

Perhaps it might be replied, that the importations being stopped in our
own islands, fewer Africans would experience this misery, because fewer
would be taken from their own country on this account. But he had a
right to infer, that as the planters purchased slaves at present, they
would still think it their interest to have them. The question then was,
whether they could get them by smuggling. Now it appeared by the
evidence, that many hundred slaves had been stolen from time to time
from Jamaica, and carried into Cuba. But if persons could smuggle slaves
out of our colonies, they could smuggle slaves into them; but
particularly when the planters might think it to their interest to
assist them.

With respect to the slaves there, instances had been related of their
oppression, which shocked the feelings of all who heard them: but was it
fair to infer from these their general ill usage? Suppose a person were
to make a collection of the different abuses, which had happened for a
series of years under ou