with Negros;—­if it had been further established, that it was from the beginning contrary to the first principles of justice, and consequently that a pledge for its continuance, had one been attempted to be given, must have been absolutely void—­where in this act of parliament was the contract to be found, by which Britain was bound, as she was said to be, never to listen to her own true interests and to the cries of the natives of Africa?  Was it not clear, that all argument, founded on the supposed pledge of Parliament, made against those who employed it?

But if we were not bound by existing laws to the support of this trade, we were doubly criminal in pursuing it:  for why ought it to be abolished at all?  Because it was incurable injustice.  Africa was the ground, on which he chiefly rested; and there it was, that his two honourable friends, one of whom had proposed gradual abolition, and the other regulation, did not carry their principles to their full extent.  Both had confessed the trade to be a moral evil.  How much stronger then was the argument for immediate than for gradual abolition!  If on the ground of a moral evil it was to be abolished at last, why ought it not now?  Why was injustice to be suffered to remain for a single hour?  He knew of no evil, which ever had existed, nor could he imagine any to exist, worse than the tearing of eighty thousand persons annually from their native land, by a combination of the most civilized nations, in the most enlightened quarter of the globe; but more especially by that nation, which called herself the most free and the most happy of them all.

He would now notice the objection, that other nations would not give up the Slave-trade, if we were to renounce it.  But if the trade were stained but by a thousandth part of the criminality, which he and others, after a thorough investigation of the subject, charged upon it, the House ought immediately to vote its abolition.  This miserable argument, if persevered in, would be an eternal bar to the annihilation of the evil.  How was it ever to be eradicated, if every nation was thus prudentially to wait till the concurrence of all the world should be obtained?  But it applied a thousand times more strongly in a contrary way.  How much more justly would other nations say, “Great Britain, free as she is, just and honourable as she is, not only has not abolished, but has refused to abolish, the Slave-trade.  She has investigated it well.  Her senate has deliberated upon it.  It is plain, then, that she sees no guilt in it.”  With this argument we should furnish the other nations of Europe, if we were again to refuse to put an end to this cruel traffic:  and we should have from henceforth not only to answer for our own, but for their crimes also.  Already we had suffered one year to pass away; and now, when the question was renewed, not only had this wretched argument been revived, but a proposition had been made for the gradual abolition