the trade.  Was it not, therefore, idle to rely upon them for the accomplishment of it?  He then took a very comprehensive view of the arguments, which had been offered in the course of the debate, and was severe upon the planters in the House, who, he said, had brought into familiar use certain expressions, with no other view than to throw a veil over their odious system.  Among these was, “their right to import labourers.”  But never was the word “labourers” so prostituted, as when it was used for slaves.  Never was the word “right” so prostituted, not even when “the rights of man” were talked of; as when the right to trade in man’s blood was asserted, by the members of an enlightened assembly.  Never was the right of importing these labourers worse defended than when the antiquity, of the Slave Trade, and its foundation on the ancient acts of parliament, were brought forward in its support.  We had been cautioned not to lay our unhallowed hands on the ancient institution of the Slave Trade; nor to subvert a fabric, raised by the wisdom of our ancestors, and consecrated by a lapse of ages.  But on what principles did we usually respect the institutions of antiquity?  We respected them, when we saw some shadow of departed worth and usefulness; or some memorial of what had been creditable to mankind.  But was this the case with the Slave Trade?  Had it begun in principles of justice or national honour, which the changes of the world alone had impaired?  Had it to plead former services and glories in behalf of its present disgrace?  In looking at it we saw nothing but crimes and sufferings from the beginning—­nothing but what wounded and convulsed our feelings—­nothing but what excited indignation and horror.  It had not even to plead what could often be said in favour of the most unjustifiable wars.  Though conquest had sometimes originated in ambition, and in the worst of motives, yet the conquerors and the conquered were sometimes blended afterwards into one people; so that a system of common interest arose out of former differences.  But where was the analogy of the eases?  Was it only at the outset that we could trace violence and injustice on the part of the Slave Trade?  Were the oppressors and the oppressed so reconciled, that enmities ultimately ceased?  No.  Was it reasonable then to urge a prescriptive right, not to the fruits of an ancient and forgotten evil, but to a series of new violences; to a chain of fresh enormities; to cruelties continually repeated; and of which every instance inflicted a fresh calamity, and constituted a separate and substantial crime?

The debate being over, the House divided; when it appeared that there were for Mr. Wilberforce’s motion seventy-four, but against it eighty-two.