An honourable member (Mr. Grosvenor) had attributed the protraction of this business to those who had introduced it.  But from whom did the motion for further evidence (when that of the privy council was refused) originate, but from the enemies of the abolition?  The same gentleman had said, it was impossible to abolish the trade; but where was the impossibility of forbidding the further importation of slaves into our own colonies? and beyond this the motion did not extend.

The latter argument had also been advanced by Sir William Yonge and others.  But allowing it its full force, would there be no honour in the dereliction of such a commerce?  Would it be nothing publicly to recognise great and just principles?  Would our example be nothing!—­Yes:  every country would learn, from our experiment, that American colonies could be cultivated without the necessity of continual supplies equally expensive and disgraceful.

But we might do more than merely lay down principles or propose examples.  We might, in fact, diminish the evil itself immediately by no inconsiderable part,—­by the whole of our own supply; and here he could not at all agree with the honourable baronet, in what seemed to him a commercial paradox, that the taking away from an open trade by far the largest customer, and the lessening of the consumption of the article, would increase both the competition and the demand, and of course all those mischiefs, which it was their intention to avert.

That the civilization of the Africans was promoted, as had been asserted, by their intercourse with the Europeans, was void of foundation, as had appeared from the evidence.  In manners and dishonesty they had indeed assimilated with those who frequented their coasts.  But the greatest industry and the least corruption of morals were in the interior, where they were out of the way of this civilizing connexion.

To relieve Africa from famine, was another of the benign reasons which had been assigned for continuing the trade.  That famines had occurred there, he did not doubt; but that they should annually occur, and with such arithmetical exactness as to suit the demands of the Slave Trade, was a circumstance most extraordinary; so wonderful, indeed, that, could it once be proved, he should consider it as a far better argument in favour of the divine approbation of that trade, than any which had ever yet been produced.

As to the effect of the abolition on the West Indies, it would give weight to every humane regulation which had been made; by substituting a certain and obvious interest, in the place of one depending upon chances and calculation.  An honourable member (Mr. Stanley) had spoken of the impossibility of cultivating the estates there without further importations of negroes; and yet, of all the authorities he had brought to prove his case, there was scarcely one which might not be pressed to serve more or less effectually against