From Jamaica he would now go to the other islands.  In Barbadoes the slaves had rather increased.  In St. Kitts the decrease for fourteen years had been but three-fourths per cent.; but here many of the observations would apply, which he had used in the case of Jamaica.  In Antigua many had died by a particular calamity.  But for this, the decrease would have been trifling.  In Nevis and Montserrat there was little or no disproportion of the sexes; so that it might well be hoped, that the numbers would be kept up in these islands.  In Dominica some controversy had arisen about the calculation; but Governor Orde had stated an increase of births above the deaths.  From Grenada and St. Vincent’s no accurate accounts had been delivered in answer to the queries sent them; but they were probably not in circumstances less favourable than in the other islands.

On a full review, then, of the state of the Negro population in the West Indies, was there any serious ground of alarm from the abolition of the Slave Trade?  Where was the impracticability, on which alone so many had rested their objections?  Must we not blush at pretending, that it would distress our consciences to accede to this measure, as far as the question of the Negro population was concerned?

Intolerable were the mischiefs of this trade, both in its origin, and through every stage of its progress.  To say that slaves could be furnished us by fair and commercial means was ridiculous.  The trade sometimes ceased, as during the late war.  The demand was more or less according to circumstances.  But how was it possible, that to a demand so exceedingly fluctuating the supply should always exactly accommodate itself?  Alas!  We made human beings the subject of commerce; we talked of them as such; and yet we would not allow them the common principle of commerce, that the supply must accommodate itself to the consumption.  It was not from wars, then, that the slaves were chiefly procured.  They were obtained in proportion as they were wanted.  If a demand for slaves arose, a supply was forced in one way or other; and it was in vain, overpowered as we then were with positive evidence, as well as the reasonableness of the supposition, to deny that by the Slave Trade we occasioned all the enormities which had been alleged against it.

Sir William Yonge had said, that if we were not to take the Africans from their country, they would be destroyed.  But he had not yet read that all uncivilized nations destroyed their captives.  We assumed, therefore, what was false.  The very selling of them implied this; for, if they would sell their captives for profit, why should they not employ them so as to receive a profit also?  Nay, many of them, while there was no demand from the slave merchants, were often actually so employed.  The trade, too, had been suspended during the war; and it was never said, or thought, that any such consequence had then followed.