There was a species of slavery, prevailing only a few years ago, in the collieries in certain boroughs in Scotland.  Emancipation there was thought a duty by parliament:  but what an opposition there was to the measure!  Nothing but ruin would be the consequence of it!  After several years struggle the bill was Carried.  Within a year after, the ruin so much talked of vanished in smoke, and there was an end of the business.  It had also been contended that Sir William Dolben’s bill would be the ruin of Liverpool:  and yet one of its representatives had allowed, that this bill had been of benefit to the owners of the slave-vessels there.  Was he then asking too much of the West Indians, to request a candid consideration of the real ground of their alarms?  He would conclude by stating, that he meant to propose a middle way of proceeding.  If there was a number of members in the House, who thought with him, that this trade ought to be ultimately abolished, but yet by moderate measures, which should neither invade the property nor the prejudices of individuals, he wished them to unite, and they might then reduce the question to its proper limits.

Mr. Addington, the speaker, (now Viscount Sidmouth,) professed himself to be one of those moderate persons called upon by Mr. Dundas.  He wished to see some middle measure suggested.  The fear of doing injury to the property of others, had hitherto prevented him from giving an opinion against a system, the continuance of which he could not countenance.

He utterly abhorred the Slave Trade.  A noble and learned lord, who had now retired from the bench, said on a certain occasion, that he pitied the loyalty of that man, who imagined that any epithet could aggravate the crime of treason.  So he himself knew of no language which could aggravate the crime of the Slave Trade.  It was sufficient for every purpose of crimination, to assert, that man thereby was bought; and sold, or that he was made subject to the despotism of man.  But though he thus acknowledged the justice due to a whole continent on the one side, he confessed there were opposing claims of justice on the other.  The case of the West Indians deserved a tender consideration also.

He doubted, if we were to relinquish the Slave Trade alone, whether it might not be carried on still more barbarously than at present; and whether, if we were to stop it altogether, the islands could keep up their present stocks.  It had been asserted that they could.  But he, thought that the stopping of the imputations could not be depended upon for this purpose, so much as a plan for providing them with more females.