Mr. Windham had hitherto felt a reluctance to speaking, not from the abstruseness, but from the simplicity, of the subject; but he could not longer be silent, when he observed those arguments of policy creeping again out of their lurking-places, which had fled before eloquence and truth.  The House had clearly given up the policy of the question.  They had been determined by the justice of it.  Why were they then to be troubled again with arguments of this nature?  These, if admitted, would go to the subversion of all public as well as private morality.  Nations were as much bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach in the former could not be so easily punished.  In private life morality took pretty good care of itself.  It was a kind of retail article, in which the returns were speedy.  If a man broke open his neighbour’s house, he would feel the consequences.  There was an ally of virtue, who rendered it the interest of individuals to be moral, and he was called the executioner.  But as such punishment did not always await us in our national concerns, we should substitute honour as the guardian of our national conduct.  He hoped the West-Indians would consider the character of the mother-country, and the obligations to national as well as individual justice.  He hoped also they would consider the sufferings, which they occasioned both in Africa, in the passage, and in the West-Indies.  In the passage indeed no one was capable of describing them.  The section of the slave-ship, however, made up the deficiency of language, and did away all necessity of argument, on this subject.  Disease there had to struggle with the new affliction of chains and punishment.  At one view were the irksomeness of a gaol, and the miseries of an hospital; so that the holds of these vessels put him in mind of the regions of the damned.  The trade, he said, ought immediately to be abolished.  On a comparison of the probable consequences of the abolition of it, he saw on one side only doubtful contingencies, but on the other shame and disgrace.

Sir James Johnstone contended for the immediate abolition of the trade.  He had introduced the plough into his own plantation in the West Indies, and he found the land produced more sugar than when cultivated in the ordinary way by slaves.  Even for the sake of the planters, he hoped the abolition would not be long delayed.

Mr. Dundas replied:  after which a division took place.  The number of votes in favour of the original motion were one hundred and fifty-eight, and for the amendment one hundred and nine.

On the 27th of April the House resumed the subject.  Mr. Dundas moved, as before, that the Slave-trade should cease in the year 1800; upon which Lord Mornington moved, that the year 1795 should be substituted for the latter period.

In the course of the debate, which followed, Mr. Hubbard said, that he had voted against the abolition, when the year 1793 was proposed; but he thought that, if it were not to take place till 1795, sufficient time would be allowed the planters.  He would support this amendment; and he congratulated the House on the prospect of the final triumph of truth, humanity, and justice.