acred; nor could it be
invaded, unless an adequate compensation were given in return.

They who had attempted the abolition of the trade were led away by a
mistaken humanity; the Africans themselves had no objection to its
continuance.

With respect to the middle passage, he believed the mortality there to
be on an average only five in the hundred; whereas in regiments sent out
to the West Indies, the average loss in the year was about ten and a
half per cent.

The Slave Trade was absolutely necessary, if we meant to carry on our
West India commerce; for many attempts had been made to cultivate the
lands in the different islands by white labourers, but they had always
failed.

It had also the merit of keeping up a number of seamen in readiness for
the state. Lord Rodney had stated this as one of its advantages on the
breaking out of a war. Liverpool alone could supply nine hundred and
ninety-three seamen annually.

He would now advert to the connexions dependent upon the African trade.
It was the duty of the House to protect the planters, whose lives had
been, and were then, exposed to imminent, dangers, and whose property
had undergone an unmerited, depreciation. To what could this
depreciation, and to what could the late insurrection at Dominica be
imputed, which had been saved from horrid carnage and midnight-butchery
only by the adventitious arrival of two British regiments? They could
only be attributed to the long delayed question of the abolition of the
Slave Trade; and if this question were to go much longer unsettled,
Jamaica would be endangered also.

To members of landed property he would observe, that the abolition would
lessen the commerce of the country, and increase the national debt and
the number of their taxes. The minister, he hoped, who patronized this
wild scheme had some new pecuniary resource in store to supply the
deficiencies it would occasion.

To the mercantile members he would speak thus: "A few ministerial men in
the house had been gifted with religious inspiration, and this had been
communicated to other eminent personages in it: these enlightened
philanthropists had discovered that it was necessary, for the sake of
humanity, and for the honour of the nation, that the merchants concerned
in the African trade should be persecuted, notwithstanding the sanction
of their trade by Parliament, and notwithstanding that such persecution
must aggrandize the rivals of Great Britain." Now how