In the year 1799 Mr. Wilberforce, undismayed by these different disappointments, renewed his motion.  Colonel M. Wood, Mr. Petrie, and others, among whom were Mr. Windham and Mr. Dundas, opposed it.  Mr. Pitt, Fox, W. Smith, Sir William Dolben, Sir R. Milbank, Mr. Hobhouse, and Mr. Canning, supported it.  Sir R. Milbank contended, that modifications of a system fundamentally wrong ought not to be tolerated by the legislature of a free nation.  Mr. Hobhouse said, that nothing could be so nefarious as this traffic in blood.  It was unjust in its principle.  It was cruel in its practice.  It admitted of no regulation whatever.  The abolition of it was called for equally by morality and sound policy.  Mr. Canning exposed the folly of Mr. Dundas, who had said, that as Parliament had in the year 1787 left the abolition to the colonial assemblies, it ought not to be taken out of their hands.  This great event, he observed, could only be accomplished in two ways; either by these assemblies, or by the Parliament of England.  Now the members of the assembly of Jamaica had professed, that they would never abolish the trade.  Was it not therefore idle to rely upon them for the accomplishment of it?  He then took a very comprehensive view of the arguments, which had been offered in the course of the debate, and was severe upon the planters in the House, who, he said, had brought into familiar use certain expressions, with no other view than to throw a veil over their odious system.  Among these was—­their right to import labourers.  But never was the word “labourers” so prostituted, as when it was used for slaves.  Never was the word “right” so prostituted, not even when The Rights of Man were talked of, as when the right to trade in man’s blood was asserted by the members of an enlightened assembly.  Never was the right of importing these labourers worse defended than when the antiquity of the Slave-trade, and its foundation on antient acts of parliament, were brought forward in its support.  We had been cautioned not to lay our unhallowed hands on the antient institution of the Slave-trade; nor to subvert a fabric, raised by the wisdom of our ancestors, and consecrated by a lapse of ages.  But on what principles did we usually respect the institutions of antiquity?  We respected them when we saw some shadow of departed worth and usefulness; or some memorial of what had been creditable to mankind.  But was this the case with the Slave-trade?  Had it begun in principles of justice or national honour, which the changes of the world alone had impaired? had it to plead former services and glories in behalf of its present disgrace?  In looking at it we saw nothing but crimes and sufferings from the beginning—­nothing but what wounded and convulsed our feelings—­nothing but what excited indignation and horror.  It had not even to plead what could often be said in favour of the most unjustifiable wars.  Though conquest had sometimes originated in ambition, and in the worst