He had now proved far more than he was bound to do; for, if he could only show that the abolition would not be ruinous, it would be enough.  He could give up, therefore, three arguments out of four, through the whole of what he had said, and yet have enough left for his position.  As to the Creoles, they would undoubtedly increase.  They differed in this entirely from the imported slaves, who were both a burthen and a curse to themselves and others.  The measure now proposed would operate like a charm; and, besides stopping all the miseries in Africa and the passage, would produce even more benefit in the West Indies than legal regulations could effect.

He would now just touch upon the question of emancipation.  A rash emancipation of the slaves would be mischievous.  In that unhappy situation, to which our baneful conduct had brought ourselves and them, it would be no justice on either side to give them liberty.  They were as yet incapable of it; but their situation might be gradually amended.  They might be relieved from every thing harsh and severe; raised from their present degraded state; and put under the protection of the law.  Till then, to talk of emancipation was insanity.  But it was the system of fresh importations, which interfered with these principles of improvement; and it was only the abolition which could establish them.  This suggestion had its foundation in human nature.  Wherever the incentive of honour, credit, and fair profit appeared, energy would spring up; and when these labourers should have the natural springs of human action afforded them, they would then rise to the natural level of human industry.

From Jamaica he would now go to the other islands.  In Barbadoes the slaves had rather increased.  In St. Kitts the decrease for fourteen years had been but three fourths per cent.; but here many of the observations would apply, which he had used in the case of Jamaica.  In Antigua many had died by a particular calamity.  But for this, the decrease would have been trifling.  In Nevis and Montserrat there was little or no disproportion of the sexes; so that it might well be hoped, that the numbers would be kept up in these islands.  In Dominica some controversy had arisen about the calculation; but Governor Orde had stated an increase of births above the deaths.  From Grenada and St. Vincents no accurate accounts had been delivered in answer to the queries sent them; but they were probably not in circumstances less favourable than in the other islands.

On a full review then, of the state of the Negro population in the West Indies, was there any serious ground of alarm from the abolition of the Slave-trade?  Where was the impracticability, on which alone so many had rested their objections?  Must we not blush at pretending, that it would distress our consciences to accede to this measure, as far as the question of the Negro population was concerned?