destruction of lives in the West Indies, was
itself the strongest argument that could be given, and furnished the most
imperious call upon parliament for the abolition of the trade.

Against this trade innumerable were the charges. An honourable member, Mr.
Smith, had done well to introduce those tragical stories, which had made
such an impression upon the House. No one of these had been yet
controverted. It had indeed been said, that the cruelty of the African
captain to the child was too bad to be true; and we had been desired to
look at the cross-examination of the witness, as if we should find traces
of the falsehood of his testimony there. But his cross-examination was
peculiarly honourable to his character; for after he had been pressed, in
the closest manner, by some able members of the House, the only
inconsistency they could fix upon him was, whether the fact had happened on
the same day of the same month of the year 1764 or the year 1765.

But it was idle to talk of the incredibility of such instances. It was not
denied, that absolute power was exercised by the slave-captains; and if
this was granted, all the cruelties charged upon them would naturally
follow. Never did he hear of charges so black and horrible as those
contained in the evidence on the table. They unfolded such a scene of
cruelty, that if the House, with all their present knowledge of the
circumstances, should dare to vote for its continuance, they must have
nerves, of which he had no conception. We might find instances indeed, in
history, of men violating the feelings of nature on extraordinary
occasions. Fathers had sacrificed their sons and daughters, and husbands
their wives; but to imitate their characters we ought to have not only
nerves as strong as the two Brutuses, but to take care that we had a cause
as good; or that we had motives for such a dereliction of our feelings as
patriotic as those, which historians had annexed to these when they handed
them to the notice of the world.

But what was our motive in the case before us?--to continue a trade which
was a wholesale sacrifice of a whole order and race of our
fellow-creatures; which carried them away by force from their native
country, in order to subject them to the mere will and caprice, the tyranny
and oppression, of other human beings, for their whole natural lives, them
and their posterity for ever!! O most monstrous wickedness! O unparalleled
barbarity! And, what was more aggr