n could not keep it upon these terms. Mere gain was not a
motive for a great country to rest on, as a justification of any measure.
Honour was its superior; and justice was superior to honour.

With regard to the emancipation of those in slavery, he coincided with Mr.
Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt; and upon this principle, that it might be as
dangerous to give freedom at once to a man used to slavery, as, in the case
of a man who had never seen day-light, to expose him all at once to the
full glare of a meridian sun.

With respect to the intellect and sensibility of the Africans, it was pride
only, which suggested a difference between them and ourselves. There was a
remarkable instance to the point in the evidence, and which he would quote.
In one of the slave-ships was a person of consequence; a man, once high in
a military station, and with a mind not insensible to the eminence of his
rank. He had been taken captive and sold; and was then in the hold,
confined promiscuously with the rest. Happening in the night to fall
asleep, he dreamed that he was in his own country; high in honour and
command; caressed by his family and friends; waited on by his domestics;
and surrounded with all his former comforts in life. But awaking suddenly,
and finding where he was, he was heard to burst into the loudest groans and
lamentations on the miserable contrast of his present state; mixed with the
meanest of his subjects; and subjected to the insolence of wretches a
thousand times lower than himself in every kind of endowment. He appealed
to the House, whether this was not as moving a picture of the miserable
effects of the Slave-trade, as could be well imagined. There was one way,
by which they might judge of it. Let them make the case their own. This was
the Christian rule of judging; and, having mentioned Christianity, he was
sorry to find that any should suppose, that it had given countenance to
such a system of oppression. So far was this from being the case, that he
thought it one of the most splendid triumphs of this religion, that it had
caused slavery to be so generally abolished on its appearance in the world.
It had done this by teaching us, among other beautiful precepts, that, in
the sight of their Maker, all mankind were equal. Its influence appeared to
have been more powerful in this respect than that of all the ancient
systems of philosophy; though even in these, in point of theory, we might
trace great liberality and consi