He then explained the limits of that portion of Africa, which the bill intended to set apart as sacred to peace and liberty.  He showed that this was but one-third of the coast; and therefore that two-thirds were yet left for the diabolical speculations of the slave-merchants.  He expressed his surprise that such witnesses as those against the bill should have been introduced at all.  He affirmed that their oaths were falsified by their own log-books; and that from their own accounts the very healthiest of their vessels were little better than pestilential gaols.  Mr. Robert Hume, one of these witnesses, had made a certain voyage.  He had made it in thirty-three days.  He had shipped two hundred and sixty-five slaves, and he had lost twenty-three of them.  If he had gone on losing his slaves, all of whom were under twenty-five years of age, at this rate, it was obvious, that he would have lost two hundred and fifty-three of them, if his passage had lasted for a year.  Now in London only seventeen would have died, of that age, out of one thousand within the latter period.

After having exposed the other voyages of Mr. Hume in a similar manner, he entered into a commendation of the views of the Sierra Leone company; and then defended the character of the Africans in their own country, as exhibited in the Travels of Mr. Mungo Park.  He made a judicious discrimination with respect to slavery, as it existed among them.  He showed that this slavery was analogous to that of the heroic and patriarchal ages; and contrasted it with the West Indian in an able manner.

He adverted, lastly, to what had fallen from the learned counsel, who had supported the petitions of the slave-merchants.  One of them had put this question to their lordships, “if the Slave-trade were as wicked as it had been represented, why was there no prohibition of it in the holy scriptures?” He then entered into a full defence of the scriptures on this ground, which he concluded by declaring that, as St. Paul had coupled men-stealers with murderers, he had condemned the Slave-trade in one of its most productive modes, and generally in all its modes:—­and here it was worthy of remark, that the word used by the apostle on this occasion, and which had been translated men-stealers, should have been rendered slave-traders.  This was obvious from the Scholiast of Aristophanes, whom he quoted.  It was clear therefore that the Slave-trade, if murder was forbidden, had been literally forbidden also.

The learned counsel too had admonished their lordships, to beware how they adopted the visionary projects of fanatics.  He did not know in what direction this shaft was shot; and he cared not.  It did not concern him.  With the highest reverence for the religion of the land, with the firmest conviction of its truth, and with the deepest sense of the importance of its doctrines, he was proudly conscious, that the general shape and fashion of his life bore nothing of the stamp of fanaticism.  But he begged leave,