With regard to the emancipation of those in slavery, he coincided with Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt; and upon this principle, that it might be as dangerous to give freedom at once to a man used to slavery, as, in the case of a man who had never seen day-light, to expose him all at once to the full glare of a meridian sun.

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 honour and command; caressed by his family and friends; waited on by his domestics; and surrounded with all his former comforts in life.  But awaking 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 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.  Its influence appeared to have been more powerful in this respect than that of all the ancient systems of philosophy; though even in these, in point of theory, we might trace great liberality and consideration for human rights.  Where could be found finer sentiments of liberty than in Demosthenes and Cicero?  Where bolder assertions of the rights of mankind, than in Tacitus and Thucydides?  But, alas! these were the holders of slaves:  It was not so with those who had been converted to Christianity.  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?