An attempt was then made to excite their pity in behalf of the planters.  The abolition, it was said, would produce insurrections among the slaves.  But insurrections would produce the massacre of their masters; and, if any of these should happily escape from butchery, they would be reserved only for ruin.

An appeal was then made to them on the ground of their own interest and of that of the people, whom they represented.  It was stated that the ruin of the islands would be the ruin of themselves and of the country.  Its revenue would be half annihilated.  Its naval strength would decay.  Merchants, manufacturers and others would come to beggary.  But in this deplorable situation they would expect to be indemnified for their losses.  Compensation indeed must follow.  It could not be withheld.  But what would be the amount of it?  The country would have no less than from eighty to a hundred millions to pay the sufferers; and it would be driven to such distress in paying this sum us it had never before experienced.

The last attempt was to show them that a regulation of the trade was all that was now wanted.  While this would remedy the evils complained of, it would prevent the mischief which would assuredly follow the abolition.  The planters had already done their part.  The assemblies of the different islands had most of them made wholesome laws upon the subject.  The very bills passed for this purpose in Jamaica and Grenada had arrived in England, and might be seen by the public:  the great grievances had been redressed:  no slave could now be mutilated or wantonly killed by his owner; one man could not now maltreat, or bruise, or wound the slave of another; the aged could not now be turned off to perish by hunger.  There were laws also relative to the better feeding and clothing of the slaves.  It remained only that the trade to Africa should be put under as wise and humane regulations as the slavery in the islands had undergone.

These different statements, appearing now in the public papers from day to day, began, in this early stage of the question, when the subject in all its bearings was known but to few, to make a considerable impression upon those, who were soon to be called to the decision of it.  But that, which had the greatest effect upon them, was the enormous amount of the compensation, which, it was said, must be made.  This statement against the abolition was making its way so powerfully, that Archdeacon Paley thought it his duty to write, and to send to the committee, a little treatise called Arguments against the unjust Pretensions of Slave-dealers and Holders, to be indemnified by pecuniary Allowances at the public Expense in case the Slave-trade should be abolished.  This treatise, when the substance of it was detailed in the public papers, had its influence upon several members of the House of Commons.  But there were others, who had been as it were panic-struck by the statement.  These in their fright seemed