To relieve Africa from famine, was another of the benign reasons which had been assigned for continuing the trade.  That famines had occurred there, he did not doubt; but that they should annually occur, and with such arithmetical exactness as to suit the demands of the Slave-trade, was a circumstance most extraordinary; so wonderful indeed, that, could it once be proved, he should consider it as a far better argument in favour of the divine approbation of that trade, than any which had ever yet been produced.

As to the effect of the abolition on the West Indies, it would give weight to every humane regulation which had been made; by substituting a certain and obvious interest, in the place of one depending upon chances and calculation.  An honourable member (Mr. Stanley) had spoken of the impossibility of cultivating the estates there without further importations of Negros; and yet, of all the authorities he had brought to prove his case, there was scarcely one which might not be pressed to serve more or less effectually against him.  Almost every planter he had named had found his Negros increase under the good treatment he had professed to give them; and it was an axiom, throughout the whole evidence, that wherever they were well used importations were not necessary.  It had been said indeed by some adverse witnesses, that in Jamaica all possible means had been used to keep up the stock by breeding; but how preposterous was this, when it was allowed that the morals of the slaves had been totally neglected, and that the planters preferred buying a larger proportion of males than females!

The misfortune was, that prejudice and not reason was the enemy to be subdued.  The prejudices of the West Indians on these points were numerous and inveterate.  Mr. Long himself had characterized them on this account, in terms which he should have felt diffident in using.  But Mr. Long had shown his own prejudices also.  For he justified the chaining of the Negros on board the slave-vessels, on account of “their bloody, cruel, and malicious dispositions.”  But hear his commendation of some of the Aborigines of Jamaica, “who had miserably perished in caves, whither they had retired to escape the tyranny of the Spaniards.  These,” says he, “left a glorious monument of their having disdained to survive the loss of their liberty and their country.”  And yet this same historian could not perceive that this natural love of liberty might operate as strongly and as laudably in the African Negro, as in the Indian of Jamaica.

He was concerned to acknowledge that these prejudices were yet further strengthened by resentment against those who had taken an active part in the abolition of the Slave-trade.  But it was never the object of these to throw a stigma on the whole body of the West Indians; but to prove the miserable effects of the trade.  This it was their duty to do; and if, in doing this, disgraceful circumstances had come out, it was not their fault; and it must never be forgotten that they were true.