The next consideration was the danger, to which the islands were exposed from the newly imported slaves.  Mr. Long, with a view of preventing insurrections, had advised, that a duty, equal to a prohibition, might be laid on the importation of Coromantine slaves.  After noticing one insurrection, which happened through their means, he speaks of another in the following year, in which thirty-three Coromantines, “most of whom had been newly imported, murdered and wounded no less than nineteen Whites in the space of an hour.”  To the authority of Mr. Long he would add the recorded opinion of a Committee of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, which was appointed to inquire into the best means of preventing future insurrections.  The Committee reported, that “the rebellion had originated, like most others, with the Coromantines,” and they proposed that a bill should be brought in for laying a higher duty on the importation of these particular Negros, which should operate as a prohibition.  But the danger was not confined to the introduction of Coromantines.  Mr. Long accounts for the frequent insurrections in Jamaica from the greatness of its general importations.  “In two years and a half,” says he, “twenty-seven thousand Negros have been imported—­No wonder that we have rebellions!” Surely then, when his honourable friend spoke of the calamities of St. Domingo, and of similar dangers impending over our own islands, it ill became him to be the person to cry out for further importations!  It ill became him to charges upon the abolitionists the crime of stirring up insurrections, who only recommended what the Legislature of Jamaica itself had laid down in a time of danger with an avowed view to prevent them.  It was indeed a great satisfaction to himself, that among the many arguments for prohibiting the Slave-trade, the security of our West Indian possessions against internal commotions, as well as foreign enemies, was among the most prominent and forcible.  And here he would ask his honourable friend, whether in this part of the argument he did not see reason for immediate abolition.  Why should we any longer persist in introducing those latent principles of conflagration, which, if they should once burst forth, might annihilate the industry of a hundred years? which might throw the planters back a whole century in their profits, in their cultivation, and in their progress towards the emancipation of their slaves?  It was our duty to vote, that the abolition of the Slave-trade should be immediate, and not to leave it to he knew not what future time or contingency.

Having now done with the argument of expediency, he would consider the proposition of his right honourable friend Mr. Dundas; that, on account of some patrimonial rights of the West Indians, the prohibition of the Slave-trade would be an invasion of their legal inheritance.  He would first observe, that, if this argument was worth any thing, it applied just as much to gradual as to immediate abolition.  He had no doubt, that,