An adversary, Mr. Baillie, had said, that it would not be fair to take the character of this country from the records of the Old Bailey.  He did not at all wonder, when the subject of the Slave-trade was mentioned, that the Old Bailey naturally occurred to his recollection.  The facts which had been described in the evidence, were associated in all our minds with the ideas of criminal justice.  But Mr. Baillie had forgot the essential difference between the two cases.  When we learnt from these records, that crimes were committed in this country, we learnt also, that they were punished with transportation and death.  But the crimes committed in the Slave-trade were passed over with impunity.  Nay, the perpetrators were even sent out again to commit others.

As to the mode of obtaining slaves, it had been suggested as the least disreputable, that they became so in consequence of condemnation as criminals.  But he would judge of the probability of this mode by the reasonableness of it.  No less than eighty thousand Africans were exported annually by the different nations of Europe from their own country.  Was it possible to believe, that this number could have been legally convicted of crimes, for which they had justly forfeited their liberty?  The supposition was ridiculous.  The truth was, that every enormity was practised to obtain the persons of these unhappy people.  He referred those present to the case in the evidence of the African trader, who had kidnapped and sold a girl, and who was afterwards kidnapped and sold himself.  He desired them to reason upon the conversation which had taken place between the trader and the captain of the ship on this occasion.  He desired them also to reason upon the instance mentioned this evening, which had happened in the river Cameroons, and they would infer all the rapine, all the desolation, and all the bloodshed, which had been placed to the account of this execrable trade.

An attempt had been made to impress the House with the horrible scenes which had taken place in St. Domingo, as an argument against the abolition of the Slave-trade; but could any more weighty argument be produced in its favour?  What were the causes of the insurrections there?  They were two.  The first was the indecision of the National Assembly, who wished to compromise between that which was right and that which was wrong on this subject.  And the second was the oppression of the People of Colour, and of the Slaves.  In the first of the causes we saw something like the moderation of Mr. Dundas and Mr. Addington.  One day this Assembly talked of liberty, and favoured the Blacks.  Another day they suspended their measures, and favoured the Whites.  They wished to steer a middle course; but decision had been mercy.  Decision even against the Planters would have been a thousand times better than indecision and half measures.  In the mean time, the People of Colour took the great work of justice into their own hands.  Unable,