In the West Indies he could say, personally, that the slaves were well treated, where he had an opportunity of seeing them.  But no judgment was to be formed there with respect to the evils complained of; they must be appreciated as they existed in the trade.  Of these he had also been an eye-witness.  It was on this account that he felt contrition for not having attended the House on this subject, for there were some cruelties in this traffic which the human imagination could not aggravate.  He had witnessed such scenes over the whole coast of Africa; and he could say, that if their lordships could only have a sudden glimpse of them, they would be struck with horror, and would be astonished that they could ever have been permitted to exist.  What then would they say to their continuance year after year, and from age to age?

From information, which he could not dispute, he was warranted in saying, that, on this continent, husbands were fraudulently and forcibly severed from their wives, and parents from their children; and that all the ties of blood and affection were torn up by the roots.  He had himself seen the unhappy natives put together in heaps in the hold of a ship, where, with every possible attention to them, their situation must have been intolerable.  He had also heard proved, in courts of justice, facts still more dreadful than those which he had seen.  One of these he would just mention.  The slaves on board a certain ship rose in a mass to liberate themselves, and having advanced far in the pursuit of their object, it became necessary to repel them by force.  Some of them yielded, some of them were killed in the scuffle, but many of them actually jumped into the sea and were drowned, thus preferring death to the misery of their situation; while others hung to the ship, repenting of their rashness, and bewailing with frightful noises their horrid fate.  Thus the whole vessel exhibited but one hideous scene of wretchedness.  They who were subdued and secured in chains were seized with the flux, which carried many of them off.  These things were proved in a trial before a British jury, which had to consider whether this was a loss which fell within the policy of insurance, the slaves being regarded as if they had been only a cargo of dead matter.  He could mention other instances, but they were much too shocking to be described.  Surely their lordships could never consider such a traffic to be consistent with humanity or justice.  It was impossible.

That the trade had long subsisted there was no doubt, but this was no argument for its continuance.  Many evils of much longer standing had been done away, and it was always our duty to attempt to remove them.  Should we not exult in the consideration, that we, the inhabitants of a small island, at the extremity of the globe, almost at its north pole, were become the morningstar to enlighten the nations of the earth, and to conduct them out of the shades of darkness into the realms of light; thus exhibiting to an astonished and an admiring world the blessings of a free constitution?  Let us then not allow such a glorious opportunity to escape us.