anity was obvious;
for humanity might be said to be sympathy for the distress of others, or
a desire to accomplish benevolent ends by good means. But did not the
Slave Trade convey ideas the very reverse of this definition? It
deprived men of all those comforts, in which it pleased the Creator to
make the happiness of his creatures to consist,--of the blessings of
society,--of the charities of the dear relationships of husband, wife,
father, son, and kindred,--of the due discharge of the relative duties
of these--and of that freedom, which in its pure and natural sense was
one of the greatest gifts of God to man.

It was impossible to read the evidence, as it related to this trade,
without acknowledging the inhumanity of it, and our own disgrace. By
what means was it kept up in Africa? By wars instigated, not by the
passions of the natives, but by our avarice. He knew it would be said in
reply to this, that the slaves, who were purchased by us, would be put
to death, if we were not to buy them. But what should we say, if it
should turn out, that we were the causes of those very cruelties, which
we affected to prevent? But, if it were not so, ought the first nation
in the world to condescend to be the executioner of savages?

Another way of keeping up the Slave Trade was by the practice of
man-stealing. The evidence was particularly clear upon this head. This
practice included violence, and often bloodshed. The inhumanity of it
therefore could not be doubted.

The unhappy victims, being thus procured, were conveyed, he said, across
the Atlantic in a manner which justified the charge of inhumanity again.
Indeed the suffering here was so great, that neither the mind could
conceive, nor the tongue describe, it. He had said on a former occasion,
that in their transportation there was a greater portion of misery
condensed within a smaller space, than had ever existed in the known
world. He would repeat his words; for he did not know, how he could
express himself better on the subject. And, after all these horrors,
what was their destiny? It was such, as justified the charge in the
resolution again: for, after having survived the sickness arising from
the passage, they were doomed to interminable slavery.

We had been, he said, so much accustomed to words, descriptive of the
cruelty of this traffic, that we had almost forgotten their meaning. He
wished that some person, educated as an Englishman, with suitable powers
of el