particular Negroes, which should operate as a prohibition.  But the danger was not confined to the introduction of Coromantines.  Mr. Long accounts for the frequent insurrections in Jamaica from the greatness of its general importations.  “In two years and a-half,” says he, “twenty-seven thousand Negroes have been imported.—­No wonder that we have rebellions!” Surely then, when his honourable friend spoke of the calamities of St. Domingo, and of similar dangers impending over our own islands, it ill became him to be the person to cry out for further importations!  It ill became him to charge upon the abolitionists the crime of stirring up insurrections, who only recommended what the legislature of Jamaica itself had laid down in a time of danger with an avowed view to prevent them.  It was, indeed, a great satisfaction to himself, that among the many arguments for prohibiting the Slave Trade, the security of our West Indian possessions against internal commotions, as well as foreign enemies, was among the most prominent and forcible.  And here he would ask his honourable friend, whether in this part of the argument he did not see reason for immediate abolition.  Why should we any longer persist in introducing those latent principles of conflagration, which, if they should once burst forth, might annihilate the industry of a hundred years? which might throw the planters back a whole century in their profits, in their cultivation, and in their progress towards the emancipation of their slaves?  It was our duty to vote that the abolition of the Slave Trade should be immediate, and not to leave it to he knew not what future time or contingency.

Having now done with the argument of expediency, he would consider the proposition of his right honourable friend Mr. Dundas; that, on account of some patrimonial rights of the West Indians, the prohibition of the Slave Trade would be an invasion of their legal inheritance.  He would first observe, that, if this argument was worth anything, it applied just as much to gradual as to immediate abolition.  He had no doubt, that, at whatever period we should say the trade should cease; it would be equally, set up; for it would certainly be just as good an argument against the measure in seventy years hence, as it was against it now.  It implied also, that Parliament had no right to stop the importations:  but had this detestable traffic received such a sanction, as placed it more out of the jurisdiction of the legislature for ever after, than any other branch of our trade?  In what a situation did the proposition of his honourable friend place the legislature of Great Britain!  It was scarcely possible to lay a duty on anyone article, which might not in someway affect the property of individuals.  But if the laws respecting the Slave Trade implied a contract for its perpetual continuance, the House could never regulate any other of the branches of our national commerce.

But any contract for the promotion of this trade must, in his opinion, have been void from the beginning:  for if it was an outrage upon justice, and only another name for fraud, robbery, and murder, what pledge could devolve upon the legislature to incur the obligation of becoming principals in the commission of such enormities by sanctioning their continuance?