Earl Stanhope said he would not detain their lordships long.  He could not, however, help expressing his astonishment at what had fallen from the last speaker; for he had evidently confessed that the Slave Trade was inhuman and unjust, and then he had insinuated, that it was neither inhuman nor unjust to continue it.  A more paradoxical or whimsical opinion, he believed, was never entertained, or more whimsically expressed in that house.  The noble viscount had talked of the interests of the planters; but this was but a part of the subject; for surely the people of Africa were not to be forgotten.  He did not understand the practice of complimenting the planters with the lives of men, women, and helpless children by thousands, for the sake of their pecuniary advantage; and they, who adopted it, whatever they might think of the consistency of their own conduct, offered an insult to the sacred names of humanity and justice.

The noble Earl (Westmoreland) had asked what would be the practical effect of the abolition of the Slave Trade.  He would inform him.  It would do away the infamous practices which took place in Africa; it would put an end to the horrors of the passage; it would save many thousands of our fellow-creatures from the miseries of eternal slavery; it would oblige the planters to treat those better, who were already in that unnatural state; it would increase the population of our islands; it would give a death-blow to the diabolical calculations, whether it was cheaper to work the Negroes to death and recruit the gangs by fresh importations, or to work them moderately and to treat them kindly.  He knew of no event, which would be attended with so many blessings.

There was but one other matter, which he would notice.  The noble baron (Hawkesbury) had asserted, that all the horrors of St. Domingo were the consequence of the speculative opinions which were current in a neighbouring kingdom on the subject at liberty.  They had, he said, no such origin.  They were owing to two causes; first, to the vast number of Negroes recently imported into that island; and, secondly, to a scandalous breach of faith by the French legislature.  This legislature held out the idea not only of the abolition of the Slave Trade, but also of all slavery; but it broke its word.  It held forth the rights of man to the whole human race, and then, in practice, it most infamously abandoned every article in these rights; so that it became the scorn of all the enlightened and virtuous part of mankind.  These were the great causes of the miseries of St. Domingo, and not the speculative opinions of France.

Earl Grosvenor could not but express the joy he felt at the hope, after all his disappointments, that this wicked trade would be done away.  He hoped that his Majesty’s ministers were in earnest, and that they would, early in the next session, take this great question up with a determination to go through with it; so that another year should not pass before we extended the justice and humanity of the country to the helpless and unhappy inhabitants of Africa.