with perfect
consistency as to this distinction between free labour and slave labour.
It was, indeed, necessary that he should say this; for the policy of the
Government is obviously most inconsistent. Perfect consistency, I admit,
we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a decent
consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right honourable
gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks how, if we admit
sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with decency continue to stop
Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade. This argument, whatever
be its value, proceeds on the very correct supposition that the test
of sincerity in individuals, in parties, and in governments, is
consistency. The right honourable gentleman feels, as we must all feel,
that it is impossible to give credit for good faith to a man who on one
occasion pleads a scruple of conscience as an excuse for not doing a
certain thing, and who on other occasions, where there is no essential
difference of circumstances, does that very thing without any scruple
at all. I do not wish to use such a word as hypocrisy, or to impute that
odious vice to any gentleman on either side of the House. But whoever
declares one moment that he feels himself bound by a certain moral rule,
and the next moment, in a case strictly similar, acts in direct defiance
of that rule, must submit to have, if not his honesty, yet at least his
power of discriminating right from wrong very gravely questioned.

Now, Sir, I deny the existence of the moral obligation pleaded by the
Government. I deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn our
fiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices in
the institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose such
a moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to consequences
from which every one of us would recoil, to consequences which would
throw the whole commercial and political system of the world into
confusion. I say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financial
legislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. And I say more
especially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the right honourable
Baronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and inhumanity.

Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moral
obligation. I am not setting up pecuniary considerations against
moral considerations. I know that it would be not only a wicked but
a short