Yes; we had given them just enough of
the forms of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials
to their other modes of perpetrating the most atrocious crimes. We had
given them just enough of European improvements, to enable them the more
effectually to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. Alas! alas! we had
carried on a trade with them from this civilized and enlightened
country, which, instead of diffusing knowledge, had been a check to
every laudable pursuit. We had carried a poison into their country,
which spread its contagious effects from one end of it to the other, and
which penetrated to its very centre, corrupting every part to which it
reached. We had there subverted the whole order of nature; we had
aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives
for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and
perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversion of British
commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the
globe. False to the very principles of trade, misguided in our policy,
unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done to
that continent! How should we hope to obtain forgiveness from heaven, if
we refused to use those means which the mercy of Providence had still
reserved to us for wiping away the guilt and shame, with which we were
now covered? If we refused even this degree of compensation, how
aggravated would be our guilt! Should we delay, then, to repair these
incalculable injuries? We ought to count the days, nay the very hours,
which intervened to delay the accomplishment of such a work.

On this great subject, the civilization of Africa, which, he confessed,
was near his heart, he would yet add a few observations. And first he
would say, that the present deplorable state of that country, especially
when we reflected that her chief calamities were to be ascribed to us,
called for our generous aid, rather than justified any despair, on our
part, of her recovery, and still less a repetition of our injuries. On
what ground of theory or history did we act, when we supposed she was
never to be reclaimed? There was a time, which it might be now fit to
call to remembrance, when human sacrifices, and even this very practice
of the Slave Trade existed in our own island. Slaves, as we may read in
HENRY's _History of Great Britain_, were formerly an established article
of our exports. "Great numbers," he