should be prepared to abide by the loss which might
accrue, when the public should think it right no longer to support it.
But such a trade as this it was impossible any longer to support. Indeed
it was not a trade. It was a system of robbery. It was a system, too,
injurious to the welfare of other nations. How could Africa ever be
civilized under it? While we continued to purchase the natives, they
must remain in a state of barbarism. It was impossible to civilize
slaves. It was contrary to the system of human nature. There was no
country placed under such disadvantageous circumstances, into which the
shadow of improvement had ever been introduced.

Great pains were taken to impress the house with the propriety of
regulation. Sir Grey Cooper; Aldermen Sawbridge, Watson, and Newnham;
Mr. Marsham, and Mr. Cruger, contended strenuously for it instead of
abolition. It was also stated, that the merchants would consent to any
regulation of the trade which might be offered to them.

In the course of the debate much warmth of temper was manifested on both
sides. The expression of Mr. Fox in a former debate, "that the Slave
Trade could not be regulated, because there could be no regulation of
robbery and murder," was brought up, and construed by planters in the
house as a charge of these crimes upon themselves. Mr. Fox, however,
would not retract the expression. He repeated it. He had no notion,
however, that any individual would have taken it to himself. If it
contained any reflection at all, it was on the whole parliament, who had
sanctioned such a trade. Mr. Molyneux rose up, and animadverted severely
on the character of Mr. Ramsay, one of the evidences in the privy
council report, during his residence in the West Indies. This called up
Sir William Dolben and Sir Charles Middleton in his defence, the latter
of whom bore honourable testimony to his virtues from an intimate
acquaintance with him, and a residence in the same village with him, for
twenty years. Mr. Molyneux spoke also in angry terms of the measure of
abolition. To annihilate the trade, he said, and to make no compensation
on account of it, was an act of swindling. Mr. Macnamara called the
measure hypocritical, fanatic, and methodistical. Mr. Pitt was so
irritated at the insidious attempt to set aside the privy council
report, when no complaint had been alleged against it before, that he
was quite off his guard, and he thought it right afterwards to apologize
f