nstitution
ought to be maintained because some people who have been many years in
their graves said that they did not complain of it? What if the Roman
Catholics of the present generation hold a different language on
this subject from the Roman Catholics of the last generation? Is this
inconsistency, which appears to shock the noble lord, anything but the
natural and inevitable progress of all reform? People who are oppressed,
and who have no hope of obtaining entire justice, beg to be relieved
from the most galling part of what they suffer. They assure the
oppressor that if he will only relax a little of his severity they shall
be quite content; and perhaps, at the time, they believe that they shall
be content. But are expressions of this sort, are mere supplications
uttered under duress, to estop every person who utters them, and all
his posterity to the end of time, from asking for entire justice? Am I
debarred from trying to recover property of which I have been robbed,
because, when the robber's pistol was at my breast, I begged him to take
everything that I had and to spare my life? The noble lord knows
well that, while the slave trade existed, the great men who exerted
themselves to put an end to that trade disclaimed all thought of
emancipating the negroes. In those days, Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, Lord
Grenville, Lord Grey, and even my dear and honoured friend of whom I can
never speak without emotion, Mr Wilberforce, always said that it was a
calumny to accuse them of intending to liberate the black population of
the sugar islands. In 1807 the present Duke of Northumberland, then
Lord Percy, in the generous enthusiasm of youth, rose to propose in
this House the abolition of slavery. Mr Wilberforce interposed, nay, I
believe, almost pulled Lord Percy down. Nevertheless in 1833 the
noble lord the Secretary for the Colonies brought in a bill to abolish
slavery. Suppose that when he resumed his seat, after making that most
eloquent speech in which he explained his plan to us, some West Indian
planter had risen, and had said that in 1792, in 1796, in 1807, all the
leading philanthropists had solemnly declared that they had no intention
of emancipating the negroes; would not the noble lord have answered that
nothing that had been said by anybody in 1792 or 1807 could bind us not
to do what was right in 1833?

This is not the only point on which the noble lord's speech is quite at
variance with his own conduct. He appeals to t