WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

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was nearly expiring. Captain Cook and Major Fitch, hearing her cries, broke open the door, and found her. The wretch retreated from their resentment, but cried out exultingly, "that he had only given her thirty-nine lashes (the number limited by law) at any one time; and that he had only inflicted this number three times since the beginning of the night," adding that he would prosecute them for breaking open his door; and that he would flog her to death for all any one, if he pleased; and that he would give her the fourth thirty-nine before morning.

For his own part, he declared that, interested as he might be supposed to be in the final event of the question, he was comparatively indifferent as to the present decision of the house upon it. Whatever they might do, the people of Great Britain, he was confident, would abolish the slave-trade, when, as would then soon happen, its injustice and cruelty should be fairly laid before them. It was a nest of serpents, which would never have existed so long, but for the darkness in which they lay hid. The light of day would be now let in upon them, and they would vanish from the sight. For himself, he declared he was engaged in a work, which he would never abandon. The consciousness of the justice of his cause would carry him forward, though he were alone. Let us not, he said, despair. It is a blessed cause; and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory. We have obtained for these poor creatures the recognition of their human nature, which for a while was most shamefully denied them. This is the first fruits of our efforts. Let us persevere, and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist, till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name; till we have released ourselves from the load of guilt under which we at present labor; and till we have extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarcely believe had been suffered to exist so long, a disgrace and a dishonor to our country.

If aristocracy had been thought a worse form of government than monarchy, because the people had many tyrants instead of one, how objectionable must be that form of it, which existed in our colonies! Arbitrary power could be bought there by any one, who could buy a slave. The fierceness of it was doubtless restrained by an elevation of mind in many, as arising from a consciousness of superior rank and consequence: but alas! it was too often exercised there by the base and vulgar. As for the cure of this monstrous evil, he had shown last year, that internal regulations would not produce it. These could have no effect, while the evidence of slaves was inadmissible. What would be the situation of the bulk of the people of this country, if only gentlemen of five hundred a year were admitted as evidences in our courts of law?

One

He would now say a few words relative to the Middle Passage, principally to show, that regulations could not effect a cure of the evil there. Mr. Isaac Wilson had stated in his evidence, that the ship, in which he sailed, only three years ago, was of three hundred and seventy tons; and that she carried six hundred and two slaves. Of these she lost one hundred and fifty-five. There were three or four other vessels in company with her, and which belonged to the same owners. of these carried four hundred and fifty, and buried two hundred; another carried four hundred and sixty-six, and buried seventy-three; another five hundred and forty-six, and buried one hundred and fifty-eight; and from the four together, after the landing of their cargoes, two hundred and twenty died. He fell in with another vessel, which had lost three hundred and sixty-two, but the number which had been bought, was not specified. Now if to these actual deaths, during and immediately after the voyage, we were to add the subsequent loss in the seasoning, and to consider that this would be greater than ordinary in cargoes which were landed in such a sickly state, we should find a mortality, which if it were only general for a few months would entirely depopulate the globe.

He would advert to what Mr. Wilson said, when examined, as a surgeon, as to the causes of these losses, and particularly on board his own ship where he had the means of ascertaining them. The substance of his reply was this: that most of the slaves labored under a fixed melancholy, which now and then broke out into lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of the loss of their relations, friends, and country. So powerful did this sorrow operate, that many of them attempted in various ways to destroy themselves, and three actually effected it. Others obstinately refused to take sustenance; and when the whip and other violent means were used to compel them to eat, they looked up in the face of the officer, who

unwillingly executed this painful task, and said with a smile, in their own language, "presently we shall be no more." This, their unhappy state of mind, produced a general languor and debility, which were increased in many instances by an unconquerable aversion to food, arising partly from sickness, and partly, to use the language of slave captains, from sulkiness. These causes naturally produced the flux. The contagion spread; several were carried off daily; and the disorder, aided by so many powerful auxiliaries, resisted the power of medicine. And it was worth while to remark, that these grievous sufferings were not owing either to want of care on the part of the owners, or to any negligence or harshness of the captain; for Mr. Wilson declared, that his ship was as well fitted out, and the crew and slaves as well treated, as any body could reasonably expect..

He would now go to another ship. That, in which Mr. Claxton sailed as a surgeon, afforded a repetition of all the horrid circumstances which had been described. Suicide was attempted, and effected; and the same barbarous expedients were adopted to compel the slaves to continue an existence, which they considered as too painful to be endured. The mortality also was as great. And yet here again the captain was in no wise to blame. But this vessel had sailed since the regulating act. Nay, even in the last year the deaths on ship board would be found to be between ten and eleven per cent. on the whole number exported. In truth, the house could not reach the cause of this mortality by all their regulations. Until they could cure a broken heart, until they could legislate for the affections, and bind by their statutes the passions and feelings of the mind, their labor would be in vain. Such were the evils of the passage. But evils were conspicuous everywhere in this trade. Never was there indeed a system so replete with wickedness and cruelty. To whatever part of it we turned our eyes, whether to Africa, the Middle Passage, or the West Indies, we could find no comfort, no satisfaction, no relief. It was the gracious ordinance of Providence, both in the natural and moral world, that good should often arise out of evil. Hurricanes cleared the air; and the propagation of truth was promoted by persecution. Pride, vanity, and profusion contributed often, in their remoter consequences, to the happiness of mankind. In common, what was itself evil and vicious was permitted to carry along with it some circumstances of palliation. The Arab was hospitable; the robber brave. We did not necessarily find cruelty associated with fraud, or meanness with injustice. But here the case was far otherwise. It was the prerogative of this detestable traffic to separate from evil its concomitant good, and to reconcile discordant mischiefs. It robbed war of its generosity; it deprived peace of its security; we saw in it the vices of polished society, without its knowledge or its comforts; and the evils of barbarism without its simplicity. No age, no sex, no rank, no condition, was exempt from the fatal influence of this wide-wasting calamity. Thus it attained to the fullest measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and, scorning all competition and comparison, it stood without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable pre-eminence.

Smith, who was sent out by the Royal African Company in 1726, assures us, "that the discerning natives account it their greatest unhappiness, that they were ever visited by the Europeans. They say that we Christians introduced the traffic of slaves; and that before our coming they lived in peace. But, say they, whereever Christianity comes, there come swords, and guns, and powder, and ball, along with it."

WILLIAM PITT.

Mr. Pitt rose, and said, that from the first hour of his having had the honor to sit in parliament down to the present, among all the questions, whether political or personal, in which it had been his fortune to take a share, there never had been one in which his heart was so deeply interested as in the present; both on account of the serious principles involved, and the consequences connected with it.

The present was not a mere question of feeling. The argument, which ought in his opinion to determine the committee, was, that the slave-trade was unjust. It was, therefore, such a trade as it was impossible for him to support, unless it could be first proved to him, that there were no laws of morality binding upon nations; and that it was not the duty of a legislature to restrain its subjects from invading the happiness of other countries, and from violating the fundamental principles of justice.

EDMUND BURKE-JAMES MARTIN.

EDMUND BURKE.

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Nothing makes a slave but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grows callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride is lost, the slave feels comfort. In fact, he is no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare,

"Man is a being, holding large discourse,
Looking before and after."

But a slave was incapable of looking before and after. He had no motive to do it. He was a mere passive instrument in the hands of others, to be used at their discretion. Though living, he was dead as to all voluntary agency, Though moving amidst the creation with an erect form, and with the shape and semblance of a human being, he was a nullity as a man.

He said the slave-trade was directly contrary to the principles of humanity and justice, and that the state of slavery which followed it, however mitigated, was a state so improper, so degrading, and so ruinous to the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not to be suffered to exist.

JAMES MARTIN.

He had been long aware, how much self-interest could pervert the judgment, but he was not apprised of the full power of it, till the slave-trade became a subject of discussion. For he never could believe that any man, under the influence of moral principles, could suffer himself knowingly to carry on a trade, replete with fraud, cruelty, and destruction; with destruction, indeed, of the worst kind, because it subjected the sufferers to a lingering death. It was well observed in the petition from the University of Cambridge against the slave-trade, “that a firm belief in the Providence of a benevolent Creator assured them that no system, founded on the oppressions of one part of mankind, could be beneficial to another." He felt much concern, that in an assembly of the representatives of a country, boasting itself zealous not only for the preservation of its own liberties, but for the general rights of mankind, it should be necessary to say a single word upon such a subject; but the deceitfulness of the human heart was such, as to change the appearances of truth, when it stood in opposition to self-interest. He had to lament that even among those, whose public duty it was to cling to the universal and eternal principles of truth, justice, and humanity, there were found some, who could defend that which was unjust, fraudulent, and cruel.

The doctrines he had heard that evening, ought to have been reserved for times the most flagrantly profligate and abandoned. He never expected then to learn, that the everlasting laws of righteousness were to give way to imaginary, political, and commercial expediency; and that thousands of our fellow-creatures were to be reduced to wretchedness, that individuals might enjoy opulence. Dissenters of various denominations, but particularly the Quakers, (who to their immortal honor had taken the lead in it) had vied with those of the Established Church in this amiable contest. In short, there had never been more unanimity in the country, than in this righteous attempt.

With such support, and with so good a cause, it would be impossible to fail. Let but every man stand forth, who had at any time boasted himself as an Englishman, and success would follow. But if he were to be unhappily mistaken as to the result, we must give up the name of Englishmen. Indeed, if we retained it, we should be the greatest hypocrites in the world; for we boasted of nothing more than of our own liberty; we manifested the warmest indignation at the smallest personal insult; we professed liberal sentiments towards other nations; but to do these things, and continue such a traffic, would be to deserve the hateful character before mentioned. While we could hardly bear the sight of any thing resembling slavery, even as a punishment among ourselves, how could we consistently entail an eternal slavery upon others?

For his part, he should never believe those persons to be sincere, who were loud in their professions of love of liberty, if he saw that love confined to the narrow circle of one community, which ought to be extended to the natural rights of every inhabitant of the globe.

WILLIAM SMITH.

He wondered how the last speaker could have had the boldness to draw arguments from scripture in support of the slave-trade.

Such arguments could be intended only to impose on those, who never took the trouble of thinking for themselves. Could it be thought for a moment, that the good sense of the house could be misled by a few perverted or misapplied passages, in direct opposition to the whole tenor and spirit of Christianity; to the theory, he might say, of almost every religion which had ever appeared in the world? Whatever might have been advanced, every body must feel, that the slave-trade could not exist one hour, if that excellent maxim, "to do to others as we should wish that others should do to us," had its proper influence on the conduct of men.

Nor was Mr. Stanley more happy in his argument of the antiquity and universality of slavery.

Because a practice had existed, did it necessarily follow that it was just? By this argument every crime might be defended from the time of Cain. * *

*

That the slaves were exposed to great misery in the islands was true, as well from inference as from facts: for what might not be expected from the use of arbitrary power, where the three characters of party, judge, and executioner were united! The slaves too were more capable on account of their passions, than the beasts of the field, of exciting the passions of their tyrants.

To what a length the ill treatment of them might be carried, might be learnt from the instance which Gen. Tottenham mentioned to have seen in the year 1780 in the streets of Bridge Town, Barbadoes:

“A youth about nineteen, (to use his own words in the evidence,) entirely naked, with an iron collar about his neck, having five long projecting spikes. His body both before and behind was covered with wounds. His belly and thighs were almost cut to pieces, with running ulcers all over them; and a finger might have been laid in some of the weals. He could not sit down, because his hinder part was mortified; and it was impossible for him to lie down, on account of the prongs of his collar." He supplicated the general for relief.

The latter asked, who had punished him so dreadfully? The youth answered, his master had done it. And because he could not work, this same master, in the same spirit of perversion, which extorts from scripture a justification of the slavetrade, had fulfilled the apostolic maxim, that he should have nothing to eat. The use he meant to make of this instance was to shew the unprotected state of the slaves. What must it be, where such an instance could pass, not only unpunished, but almost unregarded! If, in the streets of London, but a dog were to be seen lacerated like this miserable man, how would the cruelty of the wretch be execrated, who had thus even abused a brute !

The judicial punishments also inflicted upon the Negro, showed the low estimation in which, in consequence of the strength of old customs and deep-rooted prejudices, they were held.

Mr. Edwards, in his speech to the assembly at Jamaica, stated the following case, as one which had happened in one of the rebellions there. Some slaves surrounded the dwelling-house of their mistress. She was in bed with a lovely infant. They deliberated upon the means of putting her to death in torment. But in the end, one of them reserved her for his mistress; and they killed her infant with an axe before her face.

"Now," says Mr. Edwards, addressing himself to his audience, "you will think that no torments were too great for such horrible excesses. Nevertheless I am of a different opinion. I think that death, unaccompanied with cruelty, should be the utmost exertion of human authority over our unhappy fellow-creatures." Torments, however, were always inflicted in these cases.

.

The punishment was gibbeting alive, and exposing the delinquents to perish by the gradual effects of hunger, thirst, and a parching sun; in which situation they were known to suffer for nine days, with a fortitude scarcely credible, never uttering a single groan.

But horrible as the excesses might have been, which occasioned these punishments, it must be remembered, that they were committed by ignorant savages, who had been dragged from all they held most dear; whose patience had been exhausted by a cruel and loathsome confinement during their transportation; and whose resentment had been wound up to the highest pitch of fury by the lash of the driver.

JOHN COURTENAY-CHARLES JAMES FOR.

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But he would now mention another instance, by way of contrast, out of the evidence. A child on board a slave ship, of about ten months old, took sulk and would not eat. The captain flogged it with a cat; swearing he would make it eat, or kill it. From this and other ill treatment the child's legs swelled. He ordered some water to be made hot to abate the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel; for the cook, on putting his hand into the water, said it was too hot. Upon this the captain swore at him, and ordered the feet to be put in. This was done. The nails and skin came off. Oiled cloths were then put round them. The child was at length tied to a heavy log. Two or three days afterwards, the captain caught it up again; and repeated that he would make it eat or kill it. He immediately flogged it again, and in a quarter of an hour it died. But, after the child was dead, whom should the barbarian select to throw it overboard, but the wretched mother? In vain she started from the office. He beat her, till he made her take up the child and carry it to the side of the vessel. She then dropped it into the sea, turning her head the other way that she might not see it.

Now it would naturally be asked, was not this captain also gibbeted alive? Alas! although the execrable barbarity of the European exceeded that of the Africans before mentioned, almost as much as his opportunities of instruction had been greater than theirs, no notice whatever was taken of this horrible action; and a thousand similar cruelties had been committed in this abominable trade with equal impunity-but he would say no more."

JOHN COURTENAY.

The trade, it had been said, was conducted upon the principles of humanity. Yes we rescued the Africans from what we were pleased to call their wretched situation in their own country, and then we took credit for our humanity; because, after having killed one half of them in the seasoning, we substituted what we were pleased to call a better treatment than that which they would have experienced at home.

It had been said by Mr. Stanley, that the pulpit had been used as an instrument of attack on the slave-trade. He was happy to learn it had been so well employed; and he hoped the bishops would rise up in the house of lords, with the virtuous indignation which became them, to abolish a traffic so contrary to humanity, justice, and religion.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

Some expressions, which he had used on the preceding day, had been complained of as too harsh and severe. He had since considered them; but he could not prevail upon himself to retract them; because, if any gentleman, after reading the evidence on the table, and attending to the debate, could avow himself an abettor in this shameful traffic in human flesh, it could only be from some hardness of heart, or some difficulty of understanding, which he really knew not how to account for.

Some had considered this question as a question of political, whereas it was a question of personal freedom. Political freedom was undoubtedly a great blessing; but, when it came to be compared with personal, it sunk to nothing. To confound the two served therefore to render all arguments on either perplexing and unintelligible. Personal freedom was the first right of every human being. It was a right, of which he who deprived a fellow creature was absolutely criminal in so depriving him, and which he who withheld was no less criminal in withholding. He could not therefore retract his words with respect to any, who (whatever respect he might otherwise have for them) should, by their vote of that night, deprive their fellow creatures of so great a blessing. Nay, he would go further. He would say that if the house, knowing what the trade was by the evidence, did not by their vote mark to all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enormous, so repugnant to all laws, human and divine, they would consign their characters to eternal infamy.

But what was our motive in the case before us? To continue a trade which was a wholesale sacrifice of a whole order and race of our fellow creatures; which carried them away by force from their native country, in order to subject them to the mere will and caprice, the tyranny and oppression, of other human beings, for their whole natural lives, them and their posterity for ever!! O most monstrous wick