of the trade.  He knew indeed the difficulty of reforming long established abuses:  but in the present case, by proposing some other period than the present, by prescribing some condition, by waiting for some contingency, perhaps till we obtained the general concurrence of Europe, (a concurrence which he believed never yet took place at the commencement of any one improvement in policy or morals,) he feared that this most enormous evil would never be redressed.  Was it not folly to wait for the stream to run down before we crossed the bed of its channel?  Alas! we might wait for ever.  The river would still flow on.  We should be no nearer the object, which we had in view, so long as the step, which could alone bring us to it, was not taken.

He would now proceed to the civilization of Africa; and as his eye had just glanced upon a West Indian law in the evidence upon the table, he would begin with an argument, which the sight of it had suggested to him.  This argument had been ably answered in the course of the evening; but he would view it in yet another light.  It had been said, that the savage disposition of the Africans rendered the prospect of their civilization almost hopeless.  This argument was indeed of long standing; but, last year, it had been supported upon a new ground.  Captain Frazer had stated in his evidence, that a boy had been put to death at Cabenda, because there were those who refused to purchase him as a slave.  This single story was deemed by him, and had been considered by others, as a sufficient proof of the barbarity of the Africans, and of the inutility of abolishing the Slave-trade.  But they, who had used this fact, had suppressed several circumstances relating to it.  It appeared, on questioning Captain Frazer afterward, that this boy had previously run away from his master three several times; that the master had to pay his value, according to the custom of the country, every time he was brought back; and that partly from anger at the boy for running away so frequently, and partly to prevent a repetition of the same expense, he determined to destroy him.  Such was the explanation of the signal instance, which was to fix barbarity on all Africa, as it came out in the cross-examination of Captain Frazer.  That this African master was unenlightened and barbarous, he freely admitted:  but what would an enlightened and civilized West Indian have done in a similar case?  He would quote the law, passed in the West Indies in 1722, which he had just cast his eye upon in the book of evidence, by which law this very same crime of running away was by the legislature of an island, by the grave and deliberate sentence of an enlightened legislature, punished with death; and this, not in the case only of the third offence, but even in the very first instance.  It was enacted, “That, if any Negro or other slave should withdraw himself from his master for the term of six months; or any slave, who was absent, should not return within that time, every such person