ife. In framing them, how frequently must you be
reminded of the remark of Mr. Grosvenor, in one of the early debates
upon the subject, which I believe you have yourself recorded, "that he
had twenty objections to the abolition of the slave trade: the first
was, _that it was impossible_--the rest he need not give." Can you say
to yourself, or to the world, that this _first_ objection of Mr.
Grosvenor has been yet confuted? It was estimated at the commencement of
your agitation in 1787, that forty-five thousand Africans were annually
transported to America and the West Indies. And the mortality of the
middle passage, computed by some at five, is now admitted not to have
exceeded nine per cent. Notwithstanding your Act of Parliament, the
previous abolition by the United States, and that all the powers in the
world have subsequently prohibited this trade--some of the greatest of
them declaring it piracy, and covering the African seas with armed
vessels to prevent it--Sir Thomas Fowel Buxton, a coadjutor of yours,
declared in 1840, that the number of Africans now annually sold into
slavery beyond the sea, amounts, at the very least, to one hundred and
fifty thousand souls; while the mortality of the middle passage has
increased, in consequence of the measures taken to suppress the trade,
to twenty-five or thirty per cent. And of the one hundred and fifty
thousand slaves who have been captured and liberated by British
men-of-war, since the passage of your Act, Judge Jay, an American
abolitionist, asserts that one hundred thousand, or two-thirds, have
perished between their capture and liberation. Does it not really seem
that Mr. Grosvenor was a prophet? That though nearly all the
"impossibilities" of 1787 have vanished, and become as familiar _facts_
as our household customs, under the magic influence of steam, cotton,
and universal peace, yet this wonderful prophecy still stands, defying
time and the energy and genius of mankind. Thousands of valuable lives,
and fifty millions of pounds sterling, have been thrown away by your
government in fruitless attempts to overturn it. I hope you have not
lived too long for your own happiness, though you have been spared to
see that in spite of all your toils and those of your fellow laborers,
and the accomplishment of all that human agency could do, the African
slave trade has increased three-fold under your own eyes--more rapidly,
perhaps, than any other ancient branch of commerce--and