fore, idle to rely
upon them for the accomplishment of it? He then took a very
comprehensive view of the arguments, which had been offered in the
course of the debate, and was severe upon the planters in the House,
who, he said, had brought into familiar use certain expressions, with no
other view than to throw a veil over their odious system. Among these
was, "their right to import labourers." But never was the word
"labourers" so prostituted, as when it was used for slaves. Never was
the word "right" so prostituted, not even when "the rights of man" were
talked of; as when the right to trade in man's blood was asserted, by
the members of an enlightened assembly. Never was the right of importing
these labourers worse defended than when the antiquity, of the Slave
Trade, and its foundation on the ancient acts of parliament, were
brought forward in its support. We had been cautioned not to lay our
unhallowed hands on the ancient institution of the Slave Trade; nor to
subvert a fabric, raised by the wisdom of our ancestors, and consecrated
by a lapse of ages. But on what principles did we usually respect the
institutions of antiquity? We respected them, when we saw some shadow of
departed worth and usefulness; or some memorial of what had been
creditable to mankind. But was this the case with the Slave Trade? Had
it begun in principles of justice or national honour, which the changes
of the world alone had impaired? Had it to plead former services and
glories in behalf of its present disgrace? In looking at it we saw
nothing but crimes and sufferings from the beginning--nothing but what
wounded and convulsed our feelings--nothing but what excited indignation
and horror. It had not even to plead what could often be said in favour
of the most unjustifiable wars. Though conquest had sometimes originated
in ambition, and in the worst of motives, yet the conquerors and the
conquered were sometimes blended afterwards into one people; so that a
system of common interest arose out of former differences. But where was
the analogy of the eases? Was it only at the outset that we could trace
violence and injustice on the part of the Slave Trade? Were the
oppressors and the oppressed so reconciled, that enmities ultimately
ceased? No. Was it reasonable then to urge a prescriptive right, not to
the fruits of an ancient and forgotten evil, but to a series of new
violences; to a chain of fresh enormities; to cruelties continually
repeated