Yet these things, however clearly proved by positive testimony, by the concession of opponents, by particular inference, by general reasoning, by the most authentic histories of Africa, by the experience of all countries and of all ages,—­these things, and (what was still more extraordinary) even the possibility of them, were denied by those, who had been brought forward on the other side of the question.  These, however, were chiefly persons, who had been trading governors of forts in Africa; or who had long commanded ships in the Slave-trade.  As soon as he knew the sort of witnesses which was to be called against him, he had been prepared to expect much prejudice.  But his expectations had been greatly surpassed by the testimony they had given.  He did not mean to impeach their private characters, but they certainly showed themselves under the influence of such gross prejudices, as to render them incompetent judges of the subject they came to elucidate.  They seemed (if he might so say) to be enveloped by a certain atmosphere of their own; and to see, as it were, through a kind of African medium.  Every object, which met their eyes, came distorted and turned from its true direction.  Even the declarations, which they made on other occasions, seemed wholly strange to them.  They sometimes not only forgot what they had seen, but what they had said; and when to one of them his own testimony to the privy council was read, he mistook it for that of another, whose evidence he declared to be “the merest burlesque in the world.”

But the House must be aware that there was not only an African medium, but an African logic.  It seemed to be an acknowledged axiom in this; that every person, who offered a slave for sale, had a right to sell him, however fraudulently he might have obtained him.  This had been proved by the witnesses, who opposed him.  “It would have stopped my trade,” said one of them, “to have asked the broker, how he came by the person he was offering me for sale”—­“We always suppose,” said another, “the broker has a right to sell the person he offers us”—­“I never heard of such a question being asked,” said a third; “a man would be thought a fool, who should put such a question.”—­He hoped the House would see the practical utility of this logic.  It was the key-stone, which held the building together.  By means of it, slave-captains might traverse the whole coast of Africa, and see nothing but equitable practices.  They could not, however, be wholly absolved, even if they availed themselves of this principle to its fullest extent; for they had often committed depredations themselves; especially when they were passing by any part of the coast, where they did not mean to continue or to go again.  Hence it was (as several captains of the navy and others had declared on their examination) that the natives, when at sea in their canoes, would never come near the men of war, till they knew them to be such.  But finding this, and that they were not slave-vessels, they laid aside their fears, and came and continued on board with unsuspecting cheerfulness.