Individuals, as a rule, are slow to take warning from the experience of others; slower, perhaps, to follow their example in well-doing.  Nations are slower still.  When such an example is followed, still more when it is adopted by a general imitation, it will usually be found not only that the good is of a very unusual standard of excellence, but that he or they who have set the example are endowed with a force of character that predisposes others to submit to their influence.  And credit of this kind England may fairly claim for the general abolition of the slave-trade; for the condemnation and abolition of the slave-trade had this distinguishing feature, that the idea of such a policy was of exclusively British origin.  No nation had ever before conceived the notion that to make a man a slave was a crime.  On the contrary, there were not wanting those who, from the recognition of such a condition in the Bible, argued that it was a divine institution.  And they who denounced it, and labored for its suppression, had not only inveterate prejudice and long custom to contend with, but found arrayed against them many of the strongest passions that animate mankind.  The natural desire for gain united merchants, ship-owners, and planters in unanimous resistance to a measure calculated to cut off from them one large source of profit.  Patriotism, which, however misguided, was sincere and free from all taint of personal covetousness, induced many, who wore wholly unconnected either with commerce or with the West Indies, to look with disfavor on a change which not only imperilled the interests of such important bodies of men, but which they were assured by those concerned, must render the future cultivation of estates in the West Indies impracticable; while such a result would not only ruin those valuable colonies, but would also extinguish that great nursery for our navy which was furnished by the vessels at present engaged in the West India trade.  To disregard such substantial considerations to risk a loss of revenue, a diminution of our colonial greatness, and a weakening of our maritime power, even while engaged in a formidable war, under no other pressure but that of a respect for humanity and justice, was certainly a homage to those virtues, and also an act of self-denying courage, of which the previous history of the world had furnished no similar example; and it is one of which, in one point of view, the nation may be more justly proud than of the achievements of its wisest statesmen, or the exploits of its most invincible warriors.  For it was the act of the nation itself.  No previous sentiment of the people paved the way for Pitt’s triumphs in finance, for Nelson’s or Wellington’s victories by sea and land; but the slave-trade could never have been abolished by any parliamentary leader, had not the nation as a whole become convinced of its wickedness, and, when once so convinced, resolved to brave everything rather than persist in it.  The merit of having impressed