had previously obtained some of the chains in use in this cruel traffic, and had laid them upon the table of the house of commons.  His motion was seconded by that great patriot and philanthropist, sir George Saville.  But though I am now to state that it failed, I cannot but consider it as a matter of pleasing reflection, that this great subject was first introduced into parliament by those who were worthy of it; by those who had clean hands and irreproachable characters, and to whom no motive of party or faction could be imputed, but only such as must have arisen from a love of justice, a true feeling of humanity, and a proper sense of religion.

About this time two others, men of great talents and learning, promoted the cause of the injured Africans, by the manner in which they introduced them to notice in their respective works.

Dr. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, had, so early as the year 1759, held them up in an honourable, and their tyrants in a degrading light.  “There is not a Negro from the coast of Africa, who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity, which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving.  Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtue neither of the countries they came from, nor of those they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.”  And now, in 1770, in his Wealth of Nations, he showed in a forcible manner (for he appealed to the interest of those concerned) the dearness of African labour, or the impolicy of employing slaves.

Professor Millar, in his Origin of Ranks, followed Dr. Smith on the same ground.  He explained the impolicy of slavery in general, by its bad effects upon industry, population, and morals.  These effects he attached to the system of agriculture as followed in our islands.  He showed, besides, how little pains were taken, or how few contrivances were thought of, to ease the labourers there.  He contended, that the Africans ought to be better treated, and to be raised to a better condition; and he ridiculed the inconsistency of those who held them in bondage.  “It affords,” says he, “a curious spectacle to observe that the same people, who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow-creatures into circumstances, by which they are not only deprived of property, but almost of every species of right.  Fortune perhaps never produced a situation more calculated to ridicule a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by any philosophical principles.”  It is a great honour to the university of Glasgow, that it should have produced, before any public agitation of this question, three professors[A], all of whom bore their public testimony against the continuance of the cruel trade.