be able to fill
up their places, and they who had lent money upon the lands, where the
losses had happened, would foreclose their mortgages. He was fearful,
also, that a clandestine trade would be carried on, and then the
sufferings of the Africans, crammed up in small vessels, which would be
obliged to be hovering about from day to day, to watch an opportunity of
landing, would be ten times greater than any which they now experienced
in the legal trade. He was glad, however, as the matter was to be
discussed, that it had been brought forward in the shape of distinct
propositions, to be grounded upon the evidence in the privy council
report.

Mr. Fox observed that he did not like, where he agreed as to the
substance of a measure, to differ with respect to the form of it. If,
however, he differed in any thing in the present case, it was with a
view rather to forward the business than to injure it, or to throw
anything like an obstacle in its way. Nothing like either should come
from him. What he thought was, that all the propositions were not
necessary to be voted previously to the ultimate decision, though some
of them undoubtedly were. He considered them as of two classes: the one,
alleging the grounds upon which it was proper to proceed to the
abolition; such as that the trade was productive of inexpressible
misery, in various ways, to the innocent natives of Africa; that it was
the grave of our seamen, and so on; the other merely answering
objections which might be started, and where there might be a difference
of opinion. He was, however, glad that the propositions were likely to
be entered upon the journals; since, if, from any misfortune, the
business should be deferred, it might succeed another year. Sure he was
that it could not fail to succeed sooner or later. He highly approved of
what Mr. Pitt had said relative to the language it became us to hold out
to foreign powers, in case of a clandestine trade. With respect,
however, to the assertion of Sir William Yonge that a clandestine trade
in slaves would be worse than a legal one, he could not admit it. Such a
trade, if it existed at all, ought only to be clandestine. A trade in
human flesh and sinews was so scandalous, that it ought not openly to be
carried on by any government whatever, and much less by that of a
Christian country. With regard to the regulation of the Slave Trade, he
knew of no such thing as a regulation of robbery and murder. There was
no m