He deprecated the idea, that the Slave Trade had been so sanctioned by the acts of former Parliaments, that the present could make no alteration in it.  Had not the House altered the import of foreign sugar into our islands? a measure, which at the time affected the property of many.  Had they not prohibited the exports of provisions from America to the same quarter; Again, as to compacts, had the Africans ever been parties to these?  It was rather curious also, when King James the Second gave a charter to the slave-trader, that he should have given them a right to all the south of Africa, and authority over every person born therein!  But, by doing this, it was clear that he gave them a right which he never possessed himself.  After many other observations, he concluded by moving, “that the year 1793 be substituted in the place of the year 1800.”

In the course of the debate, which followed, Mr. Burdon stated his conviction of the necessity of immediate abolition; but he would support the amendment, as the shortest of the terms proposed.

Mr. Robert Thornton would support it also, as the only choice left him.  He dared not accede to a motion, by which we were to continue for seven years to imbrue our hands in innocent blood.

Mr. Ryder (now Earl of Harrowby) would not support the trade for one moment, if he could avoid it.  He could not hold a balance with gold in one scale, and blood in the other.

Mr. William Smith exposed the wickedness of restricting the trade to certain ages.  The original motion, he said, would only operate as a transfer of cruelty from the aged and the guilty to the young and the innocent.  He entreated the House to consider, whether, if it related to their own children, any one of them would vote for it.

Mr. Windham had hitherto felt a reluctance to speaking, not from the abstruseness, but from the simplicity, of the subject; but he could not longer be silent, when he observed those arguments of policy creeping again out of their lurking-places, which had fled before eloquence and truth.  The House had clearly given up the policy of the question.  They had been determined by the justice of it.  Why were they then to be troubled again with arguments of this nature?  These, if admitted, would go to the subversion of all public as well as private morality.  Nations were as much bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach in the former could not be so easily punished.  In private life morality took pretty good care of itself.  It was a kind of retail article, in which the returns were speedy.  If a man broke open his neighbour’s house, he would feel the consequences.  There was an ally of virtue, who rendered it the interest of individuals to be moral, and he was called the executioner.  But as such punishment did not always await us in our national concerns, we should substitute honour as the guardian of our national conduct.  He hoped the West Indians