on, Sir William Yonge, Mr. Puller, and Mr. Gascoyne
opposed it. Leave, however, was given him to introduce his bill.

On the second reading of it, a serious opposition took place; and an
amendment was moved for postponing it till that day six months. The
amendment was opposed by Mr. Fox and Mr. Huddlestone. The latter could
not help lifting his voice against this monstrous traffic in the sinews
and blood of man, the toleration of which had so long been the disgrace
of the British legislature. He did not charge the enormous guilt
resulting from it upon the nation at large; for the nation had washed
its hands of it by the numerous petitions it had sent against it; and it
had since been a matter of astonishment to all Christendom, how the
constitutional guardians of British freedom should have sanctioned
elsewhere the greatest system of cruelty and oppression in the world.

He said that a curse attended this trade even in the mode of defending
it. By a certain fatality, none but the vilest arguments were brought
forward, which corrupted the very persons who used them. Every one of
these was built on the narrow ground of interest--of pecuniary
profit--of sordid gain--in opposition to every high consideration--to
every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and religion--or
to that great principle which comprehended them all. Place only before
the most determined advocate of this odious traffic the exact image of
himself in the garb and harness of a slave, dragged and whipped about
like a beast; place this image also before him, and paint it as that of
one without a ray of hope to cheer him; and you would extort from him
the reluctant confession, that he would not endure for an hour the
misery to which he condemned his fellow-man for life. How dared he,
then, to use this selfish plea of interest against the voice of the
generous sympathies of his nature? But even upon this narrow ground, the
advocates for the traffic had been defeated. If the unhallowed argument
of expediency was worth anything when opposed to moral rectitude, or if
it were to supercede precepts of Christianity, where was a man to stop,
on what was he to draw? For anything he knew, it might be physically
true, that human blood was the best manure for the land; but who ought
to shed it on that account? True expediency, however, was, where it ever
would be found, on the side of that system which was most merciful and
just. He asked how it happened, th