istration of justice; we
were living under a system of government, which our own happy experience
led us to pronounce the best and wisest, and which had become the
admiration of the World. From all these blessings we must for ever have
been excluded, had there been any truth in those principles, which some
had not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa; and
we should have been at this moment little superior, either in morals,
knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of that continent.

If then we felt that this perpetual confinement in the fetters of brutal
ignorance would have been the greatest calamity which could have
befallen us; if we viewed with gratitude the contrast between our
present and our former situation; if we shuddered to think of the misery
which would still have overwhelmed us, had our country continued to the
present times, through some cruel policy, to be the mart for slaves to
the more civilized nations of the World;--God forbid that we should any
longer subject Africa to the same dreadful scourge, and exclude the
sight of knowledge from her coasts, which had reached every other
quarter of the globe!

He trusted we should no longer continue this commerce, and that we
should no longer consider ourselves as conferring too great a boon on
the natives of Africa in restoring them to the rank of human beings, He
trusted we should not think ourselves too liberal, if, by abolishing the
Slave Trade, we gave them the same common chance of civilization with
other parts of the World. If we listened to the voice of reason and duty
this night, some of us might live to see a reverse of that picture, from
which we how turned our eyes with shame. We might live to behold the
natives engaged in the calm occupations of industry, and in the pursuit
of a just commerce. We might behold the beams of science and philosophy
breaking in upon their land, which at some happy period in still later
times might blaze with full lustre; and joining their influence to that
of pure religion, might illuminate and invigorate the most distant
extremities of that immense continent. Then might we hope, that even
Africa (though last of all the quarters of the globe) should enjoy at
length, in the evening of her days, those blessings, which had descended
so plentifully upon us in a much earlier period of the world. Then also
would Europe, participating in her improvement and prosperity, receive
an ample recompens