Lord Mornington (now Marquis Wellesley) rose to propose an amendment.  He congratulated his countrymen, that the Slave-trade had received its death-wound.  This traffic was founded in injustice; and between right and wrong there could be no compromise.  Africa was not to be sacrificed to the apparent good of the West-Indies.  He would not repeat those enormities out of the evidence, which had made such a deep impression upon the House.  It had been resolved, that the trade should be abolished.  The question then was, how long they were to persevere in the crime of its continuance.  One had said, that they might be unjust for ten years longer; another, only till the beginning of the next century.  But this diversity of opinion had proceeded from an erroneous statement of Mr. Dundas against the clear and irrefragable calculations of Mr. Pitt.  The former had argued, that, because Jamaica and the ceded islands had retained almost all the slaves which had been imported into them, they were therefore not yet in a situation to support their population without further supplies from Africa.  But the truth was, that the slaves, so retained, were kept, not to maintain the population there, but to clear new land.  Now the House had determined, that the trade was not to be continued for this purpose.  The population, therefore, in the islands was sufficient to continue the ordinary cultivation of them.

He deprecated the idea, that the Slave-trade had been so sanctioned by the acts of former parliaments, that the present could make no alteration in it.  Had not the House altered the import of foreign sugar into our islands? a measure, which at the time affected the property of many.  Had they not prohibited the exports of provisions from America to the same quarter?  Again, as to compacts, had the Africans ever been parties to these?  It was rather curious also, when King James the Second gave a charter to the slave-traders, that he should have given them a right to all the south of Africa, and authority over every person born therein!  But, by doing this, it was clear, that he gave them a right which he never possessed himself.  After many other observations, he concluded by moving, “that the year 1793 be substituted in the place of the year 1800.”

In the course of the debate, which followed, Mr. Burdon stated his conviction of the necessity of immediate abolition; but he would support the amendment, as the shortest of the terms proposed.

Mr. Robert Thornton would support it also, as the only choice left him.  He dared not accede to a motion, by which we were to continue for seven years to imbrue our hands in innocent blood.

Mr. Ryder would not support the trade for one moment, if he could avoid it.  He could not hold a balance with gold in one scale, and blood in the other.

Mr. William Smith exposed the wickedness of restricting the trade to certain ages.  The original motion, he said, would only operate as a transfer of cruelty from the aged and the guilty to the young and the innocent.  He entreated the House to consider, whether, if it related to their own children, any one of them would vote for it.