What then was the probability of our example being followed by foreign powers?  Five years had now elapsed since the question was first started, and what had any of them done?  The Portuguese continued the trade.  The Spaniards still gave a bounty to encourage it.  He believed there were agents from Holland in this country, who were then negotiating with persons concerned in it in order to secure its continuance.  The abolition also had been proposed in the National Assembly of France, and had been rejected there.  From these circumstances he had a right to infer, that if we gave up the trade, we should only transfer it to those countries:  but this transfer would be entirely against the Africans.  The mortality on board English ships, previously to the regulating bill, was four and an-eighth per cent.  Since that time it had been reduced to little more than three per cent[A].  In French ships it was near ten, and in Dutch ships from five to seven, per cent.  In Portuguese it was less than either in French or Dutch, but more than in English ships since the regulating bill.  Thus the deaths of the Africans would be more than doubled, if we were to abolish the trade.

[Footnote A:  Mr. Wilberforce stated it on the same evening to be between ten and eleven per cent. for the last year.  The number then exported from Africa to our islands was rather more than 22,000, of whom more than 2,300 died.]

Perhaps it might be replied, that the importations being stopped in our own islands, fewer Africans would experience this misery, because fewer would be taken from their own country on this account.  But he had a right to infer, that as the planters purchased slaves at present, they would still think it their interest to have them.  The question then was, whether they could get them by smuggling.  Now it appeared by the evidence, that many hundred slaves had been stolen from time to time from Jamaica, and carried into Cuba.  But if persons could smuggle slaves out of our colonies, they could smuggle slaves into them; but particularly when the planters might think it to their interest to assist them.

With respect to the slaves there, instances had been related of their oppression, which shocked the feelings of all who heard them:  but was it fair to infer from these their general ill usage?  Suppose a person were to make a collection of the different abuses, which had happened for a series of years under our own happy constitution, and use these as an argument of its worthlessness; should we not say to him, that in the most perfect system which the human intellect could form some defects would exist; and that it was unfair to draw inferences from such partial facts?  In the same manner he would argue relative to the alleged treatment of the slaves.  Evidence had been produced upon this point on both sides.  He should not be afraid to oppose the authorities of Lord Rodney, and others, against any, however respectable, in favour