at whatever period we should say the trade should cease, it would be equally set up; for it would certainly be just as good an argument against the measure in seventy years hence, as it was against it now.  It implied also, that Parliament had no right to stop the importations:  but had this detestable traffic received such a sanction, as placed it more out of the jurisdiction of the legislature for ever after, than any other branch of our trade?  In what a situation did the proposition of his honourable friend place the legislature of Great Britain!  It was scarcely possible to lay a duty on any one article, which might not in some way affect the property of individuals.  But if the laws respecting the Slave-trade implied a contract for its perpetual continuance, the House could never regulate any other of the branches of our national commerce.

But any contract for the promotion of this trade must, in his opinion, have been void from the beginning:  for if it was an outrage upon justice, and only another name for fraud, robbery, and murder, What pledge could devolve upon the legislature to incur the obligation of becoming principals in the commission of such enormities by sanctioning their continuance?

But he would appeal to the acts themselves.  That of 23 George II. c. 31, was the one upon which the greatest stress was laid.  How would the House be surprised to hear, that the very outrages committed in the prosecution of this trade had been forbidden by that act!  “No master of a ship trading to Africa,” says the act, “shall by fraud, force, or violence, or by any indirect practice whatever, take on board or carry away from that coast any Negro, or native of that country, or commit any violence on the natives, to the prejudice of the said trade; and every person so offending, shall for every such offence forfeit one hundred pounds.”  But the whole trade had been demonstrated to be a system of fraud, force, and violence; and therefore the contract was daily violated, under which the Parliament allowed it to continue.

But why had the trade ever been permitted at all?  The preamble of the act would show:  “Whereas the trade to and from Africa is very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for supplying the Plantations and Colonies thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of Negros at reasonable rates, and for that purpose the said trade should be carried on”—­Here then we might see what the Parliament had in view, when it passed this act.  But no one of the occasions, on which it grounded its proceedings, now existed.  He would plead, then, the act itself as an argument for the abolition.  If it had been proved that, instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain, it was the most destructive to her interests—­that it was the ruin of her seamen—­that it stopped the extension of her manufactures;—­if it had been proved, in the second place, that it was not now necessary for the supply of our Plantations