edness! O unparalleled barbarity! And, what was more aggravating, this most complicated scene of robbery and murder which mankind had ever witnessed, had been honoured by the name of trade. With respect to the situation of the slaves in their transportation, he knew not how to give the house a more correct idea of the horrors of it, than by referring them to the printed section of the slave ship; where the eye must see what the tongue must fall short in describing. On this dismal part of the subject he would not dwell. He would only observe, that the acts of barbarity, related of the slave captains in these voyages, were so extravagant, that they had been attributed in some instances to insanity. But was not this the insanity of arbitrary power? Who ever read the facts recorded of Nero, without suspecting he was mad? Who would not be apt to impute insanity to Caligula, or Dominitian, or Caracalla, or Commodus, or Heliogabalus? Here were six Roman emperors, not connected in blood, nor by descent, who, each of them possessing arbitrary power, had been so distinguished for cruelty, that nothing short of insanity could be imputed to them. Was not the insanity of the masters of slave ships to be accounted for on the same principles? Of the slaves in the West Indies it had been said that they were taken from a worse state to a better. An honorable member, Mr. W. Smith, had quoted some instances out of the evidence to the contrary. He also would quote one or two others. A slave under hard usage had run away. To prevent a repetition of the offence the owner sent for a surgeon, and desired him to cut off the man's leg. The surgeon refused. The owner, to render it a matter of duty in the surgeon, broke it. Now,' says he, you must cut it off, or the man will die.' We might console ourselves, perhaps, that this happened in a French island; but he would select another instance, which had happened in one of our own. Mr. Ross heard the shrieks of a female issuing from an out-house; and so piercing, that he determined to see what was going on. On looking in he perceived a young female tied up by her wrists to a beam, entirely naked; and in the act of involuntary writhing and swinging; while the author of her torture was standing below her with a lighted torch in his hand, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he knew not; but the human mind could not conceive a crime warranting such a punishment. He was glad to see that these tales affected the house. Would they then sanction enormities, the bare recital of which made them shudder? Let them remember that humanity did not consist in a squeamish ear. It did not consist in shrinking and starting at such tales as these; but in a disposition of the heart to remedy the evils they unfolded. Humanity belonged rather to the mind than to the nerves. But, if so, it should prompt men to charitable exertion. One argument had been used, which for a subject so grave was the most ridiculous he had ever heard. Mr. Alderman Watson had declared the slave-trade to be necessary on account of its connexion with our fisheries. But what was this but an acknowledgment of the manner, in which these miserable beings were treated? The trade was to be kept up, with all its enormities, in order that there might be persons to consume the refuse fish from Newfoundland, which was too bad for any body else to eat. It had been said that England ought not to abolish the slave-trade, unless other nations would also give it up. But what kind of morality was this? The trade was defensible upon no other principle than that of a highwayman. Mere gain was not a motive for a great country to rest on, as a justification of any measure. Honor was its superior; and justice was superior to honor. With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was pride only, which suggested a difference between them and ourselves. There was a remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which he would quote. In one of the slave ships was a person of consequence; a man, once high in a military station, and with a mind not insensible to the eminence of his rank. He had been taken captive and sold; and was then in the hold, confined promiscuously with the rest. Happening in the night to fall asleep, he dreamed that he was in his own country; high in honor and command; caressed by his family and friends; waited on by his domestics; and surrounded with all his former comforts in life. But waking suddenly, and finding where he was, he was heard to burst into the loudest groans and lamentations on the miserable contrast of his present state; mixed with the meanest of his subjects; and subjected to the insolence of wretches a thousand PHILIP FRANCIS--BISHOP HORSLEY. 185 times lower than himself in every kind of endowment. He appealed to the house, whether this was not as moving a picture of the miserable effects of the slave-trade, as could be well imagined. There was one way, by which they might judge of it. Let them make the case their own. This was the Christian rule of judging; and, having mentioned Christianity, he was sorry to find that any should suppose that it had given countenance to such a system of oppression. So far was this from being the case, that he thought it one of the most splendid triumphs of this religion, that it had caused slavery to be so generally abolished on its appearance in the world. It had done this by teaching us, among other beautiful precepts, that, in the sight of their Maker, all mankind were equal. He knew, however, that what he had been ascribing to Christianity had been imputed by others to the advances which philosophy had made. Each of the two parties took the merit to itself. The philosopher gave it to philosophy, and the divine to religion. He should not then dispute with either of them; but as both coveted the praise, why should they not emulate each other by promoting this improvement in the condition of the human race? He would now conclude by declaring that the whole country, indeed the whole civilized world, must rejoice that such a bill as the present had been moved for, not merely as a matter of humanity, but as an act of justice; for he would put humanity out of the case. Could it be called humanity to forbear from committing murder? Exactly upon this.ground did the present motion stand; being strictly a question of national justice. He thanked Mr. Wilberforce for having pledged himself so strongly to pursue his object till it was accomplished; and, as for himself, he declared, that, in whatever situation he might ever be, he would use his warmest efforts for the promotion of this righteous cause. PHILIP FRANCIS. Having himself an interest in the West Indies, he thought that what he should submit to the house would have the double effect of evidence and argument; and he stated most unequivocally his opinion, that the abolition of the slave-trade would tend materially to the benefit of the West Indies.-Many had affirmed that the slave-trade was politic and expedient; but it was worthy of remark, that no man had ventured to deny that it was criminal. Criminal, however, he declared it to be in the highest degree; and he believed it was equally impolitic. Both its inexpediency and injustice had been established by the honorable mover. He instanced an overseer, who, having thrown a negro into a copper of boiling cane-juice for a trifling offence, was punished merely by the loss of his place, and by being obliged to pay the value of his slave. He stated another instance of a girl of fourteen, who was dreadfully whipped for coming too late to her work. She fell down motionless after it; and was then dragged along the ground, by the legs, to an hospital; where she died. This was a notorious fact. It was published in the Jamaica Gazette: and it has even happened since the question of the abolition had been started. The only argument used against such cruelties was the master's interest in the slave. But he urged the common cruelty to horses, in which the drivers had an equal interest with the drivers of men in the colonies, as a proof that this was no security. He had never heard an instance of a master being punished for the murder of his slave. The propagation of the slaves was so far from being encouraged, that it was purposely checked, because it was thought more profitable and less troublesome to buy a full-grown negro, than to rear a child. He repeated that his interest might have inclined him to the other side of the question; but he did not choose to compromise between his interest and his duty; for, if he abandoned his duty, he should not be happy in this world; nor should he deserve happiness in the next. BISHOP HORSLEY. The noble Earl has produced to your lordships a passage in the Levitical Law, which enacts that the foreign slave should be the property of his master for ever. Whence the noble Earl concludes that the perpetual servitude of foreign slaves was actually sanctioned by the law. But, my lords, I must tell the noble Earl, and I must tell your lordships, that the noble Earl has no understanding at all of the technical terms of the Jewish Law. In all the laws relating to the transfer of property, the words for ever, signify only to the next jubilee. That is the longest for ever which the Jewish law knows, with respect to property. And this law, which makes the foreign slave the property of his master for ever, makes him no longer the master's property than to the next jubilee. And with the great attention the noble Earl has given to the laws and history of the Jews, he must know that when they were carried into captivity, they were told by their prophets that one of the crimes which drew down that judgment upon them, was their gross neglect and violation of these merciful laws respecting manumission; and that in contempt and defiance of the law, it had been their practice to hold their foreign slaves in servitude, beyond the year of jubilee.-Speech in the House of Lords, June 24, 1806. Dr. Horsley adverted to what had fallen from the learned counsel, who had supported the petitions of the slave-merchants. One of them had put this question to their lordships, "If the slave-trade were as wicked as it had been represented, why was there no prohibition of it in the Holy Scriptures?" He then entered into a full defence of the scriptures on this ground, which he concluded by declaring that, as St. Paul had coupled men-stealers with murderers, he had condemned the slavetrade in one of its most productive modes, and generally in all its modes: and here it was worthy of remark, that the word used by the apostle on this occasion, and which had been translated men-stealers, should have been rendered slave-traders. This was obvious from the scholiast of Aristophanes, whom he quoted. It was clear, therefore, that the slave-trade, if murder was forbidden, had been literally forbidden also. The learned counsel, too, had admonished their lordships to beware how they adopted the visionary projects of fanatics. He did not know in what direction this shaft was shot; and he cared not. It did not concern him. With the highest reverence for the religion of the land, with the firmest conviction of its truth, and with the deepest sense of the importance of its doctrines, he was proudly conscious, that the general shape and fashion of his life bore nothing of the stamp of fanaticism. But he begged leave, in his turn, to address a word of serious exhortation to their lordships. He exhorted them to beware how they were persuaded to bury, under the opprobrious name of fanaticism, the regard which they owed to the great duties of mercy and justice, for the neglect of which, (if they should neglect them,) they would be answerable at that tribunal, where no prevarication of witnesses could misinform the judge; and where no subtilty of an advocate, miscalling the names of things, putting evil for good and good for evil, could mislead his judgment. MR. HUDDLESTONE. Mr. Huddlestone could not help lifting his voice against this monstrous traffic in the sinews and blood of man, the toleration of which had long been the disgrace of the British legislature. He did not charge the enormous guilt resulting from it upon the nation at large; for the nation had washed its hands of it by the numerous petitions it had sent against it; and it had since been a matter of astonishment to all Christendom, how the constitutional guardians of British freedom should have sanctioned elsewhere the greatest system of cruelty and oppression in the world. He said that a curse attended this trade even in the mode of defending it. By a certain fatality, none but the vilest arguments were brought forward, which corrupted the very persons, who used them. Every one of these were built on the narrow ground of interest; of pecuniary profit; of sordid gain; in opposition to every higher consideration; to every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and religion; or to that great principle, which comprehended them all. Place only before the most determined advocate of this odious traffic, the exact image of himself in the garb and harness of a slave, dragged and whipped about like a beast; place this image also before him, and paint it as that of one without a ray of hope to cheer him; and you would extort from him the reluctant confession, that he would not endure for an hour the misery, to which he condemned his fellow-man for life. How dared he then to use this selfish plea of interest against the voice of the generous sympathies of his nature? But even upon this narrow ground, the advo cates for the traffic had been defeated. If the unhallowed argument of expediency WHITBREAD-ERSKINE-CARYSFORT. 187 was worth any thing when opposed to moral rectitude, or if it were to supersede the precepts of Christianity, where was a man to stop, or what line was he to draw? For any thing he knew it might be physically true, that human blood was the best manure for the land; but who ought to shed it on that account? True expediency, however, was, where it ever would be found, on the side of that system, which was most merciful and just. The condition of the negroes in the West Indies had been lately compared with that of the Hindoos. But no barbarous sounds of cracking whips reminded him, that with the form and image of a man, his destiny was that of a beast of the field. Let the advocates for the bloody traffic state what they had to set off on their side of the question against the comforts and independence of the man, with whom they compared the slave. SAMUEL WHITBREAD. No eloquence could persuade him, that the Africans were torn from their country and their dearest connexions, merely that they might lead a happier life; or that they could be placed under the uncontrolled dominion of others without suffering. Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best. Hence would arise tyranny on the one side, and a sense of injury on the other. Hence the passions would be let loose, and a state of perpetual enmity would follow. He needed only to go to the accounts of those who defended the system of slavery, to show that it was cruel. He was forcibly struck last year by an expression of an honorable member, an advocate for the trade, who, when he came to speak of the slaves, on selling off the stock of a plantation, said, that they fetched less than the common price, because they were damaged! Damaged! What! were they goods and chattels? What an idea was this to hold out to our fellow creatures! We might imagine how slaves were treated, if they could be spoken of in such a manner. Perhaps these unhappy people had lingered out the best part of their lives in the service of their master. Able then to do but little, they were sold for little! and the remaining substance of their sinews was to be pressed out by another, yet more hardened than the former, and who had made a calculation of their vitals accordingly. THOMAS ERSKINE. The Lord Chancellor (Erskine) said, "From information which he could not dispute, he was warranted in saying, that on this continent [Africa] husbands were fraudulently and forcibly severed from their wives, and parents from their children; and that all the ties of blood and affection were torn up by the roots. He had himself seen the unhappy natives put together in heaps in the hold of a ship, where, with every possible attention to them, their situation must have been intolerable. He had also heard proved in courts of justice, facts still more dreadful than those which he had seen. One of these he would just mention. The slaves on board a certain ship rose in a mass to liberate themselves; and having far advanced in the pursuit of their object, it became necessary to repel them by force. Some of them yielded; some of them were killed in the scuffle; but many of them actually jumped into the sea and were drowned; thus preferring death to the misery of their situation; while others hung to the ship, repenting of their rashness, and bewailing with frightful noises their horrid fate. Thus the whole vessel exhibited but one hideous scene of wretchedness. They, who were subdued, and secured in chains, were seized with the flux, which carried many of them off. These things were proved in a trial before a British jury, which had to consider, whether this was a loss, which fell within the policy of insurance, the slaves being regarded as if they had been only a cargo of dead matter. He could mention other instances, but they were much too shocking to be described. Surely their lordships could never consider such a traffic to be consistent with humanity or justice." CARYSFORT. Lord Carysfort rose, and said, "that the great cause of abolition had flourished by the manner in which it had been opposed. No one argument of solid weight has been adduced against it. It had been shown, but never disproved, that the colonial laws were inadequate to the protection of the slaves; that the punishments of the latter were most unmerciful; that they were deprived of the right of self-defence against any white man, and, in short, that the system was totally repugnant to the principles of the British constitution." GEORGE GRENVILLE. Lord Grenville then read a resolution of the Commons. "This resolution, he said, stated first, that the slave-trade was contrary to humanity, justice, and sound policy. That it was contrary to humanity was obvious; for humanity might be said to be sympathy for the distresses of others, or a desire to accomplish benevolent ends by good means. But did not the slave-trade convey ideas the very reverse of the definition? It deprived men of all those comforts, in which it pleased the Creator to make the happiness of his creature to consist, of the blessings of society, of the charities of the dear relationships of husband, wife, father, son, and kindred; of the due discharge of the relative duties of these, and of that freedom, which in its pure and natural sense, was one of the greatest gifts of God to man. "It was impossible to read the evidence, as it related to this trade, without acknowledging the inhumanity of it and our own disgrace. "Another way of keeping up the slave-trade was by the practice of man-stealing. The evidence was particularly clear upon this head. This practice included violence, and often bloodshed. The inhumanity of it therefore could not be doubted. "The unhappy victims, being thus procured, were conveyed, he said, across the Atlantic in a manner which justified the charge of inhumanity again. Indeed the suffering here was so great, that neither the mind could conceive nor the tongue describe it. He had said on a former occasion, that in their transportation there was a greater portion of misery condensed within a smaller space, than had ever existed in the known world. He would repeat his words, for he did not know, how he could express himself better on the subject. And, after all these horrors, what was their destiny? It was such, as justified the charge in the resolution again: for, after having survived the sickness arising from the passage, they were doomed to interminable slavery. "He intreated their lordships, to endeavor to conceive the hard case of the unhappy victims of it; and as he had led them to the last stage of their miserable existence, which was in the colonies, to contemplate it there. They were there under the arbitrary will of a cruel task-master from morning till night. When they went to rest, would not their dreams be frightful? When they awoke, would they not awake .༦ only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace "They knew no change, except in the humor of their masters, to whom their whole destiny was entrusted. We might perhaps flatter ourselves with saying, that they were subject to the will of Englishmen. But Englishmen were not better than others, when in possession of arbitrary power. The very fairest exercise of it was a never-failing corrupter of the heart. But suppose it were allowed, that selfinterest might operate some little against cruelty; yet where was the interest of the overseer or the driver? But he knew it would be said, that the evils complained of in the colonies had been mitigated. There might be instances of this; but they could never be cured, while slavery existed. Slavery took away more than half of the human character. Hence the practice, where it existed, of rejecting the testimony of the slave: but, if his testimony was rejected, where could be his redress against his oppressor? "Having shown the inhumanity, he would proceed to the second point in the resolution, or the injustice, of the trade. We had two ideas of justice; first, as it belonged to society by virtue of a social compact; and secondly, as it belonged to men, not as citizens of a community, but as beings of one common nature. In a state of nature, man had a right to the fruit of his own labour absolutely to himself; and one of the main purposes, for which he entered into society, was, that |