recorded opinion of a Committee of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, which
was appointed to inquire into the best means of preventing future
insurrections. The Committee reported, that "the rebellion had originated,
like most others, with the Coromantines," and they proposed that a bill
should be brought in for laying a higher duty on the importation of these
particular Negros, which should operate as a prohibition. But the danger
was not confined to the introduction of Coromantines. Mr. Long accounts for
the frequent insurrections in Jamaica from the greatness of its general
importations. "In two years and a half," says he, "twenty-seven thousand
Negros have been imported--No wonder that we have rebellions!" Surely then,
when his honourable friend spoke of the calamities of St. Domingo, and of
similar dangers impending over our own islands, it ill became him to be the
person to cry out for further importations! It ill became him to charges
upon the abolitionists the crime of stirring up insurrections, who only
recommended what the Legislature of Jamaica itself had laid down in a time
of danger with an avowed view to prevent them. It was indeed a great
satisfaction to himself, that among the many arguments for prohibiting the
Slave-trade, the security of our West Indian possessions against internal
commotions, as well as foreign enemies, was among the most prominent and
forcible. And here he would ask his honourable friend, whether in this part
of the argument he did not see reason for immediate abolition. Why should
we any longer persist in introducing those latent principles of
conflagration, which, if they should once burst forth, might annihilate the
industry of a hundred years? which might throw the planters back a whole
century in their profits, in their cultivation, and in their progress
towards the emancipation of their slaves? It was our duty to vote, that the
abolition of the Slave-trade should be immediate, and not to leave it to he
knew not what future time or contingency.

Having now done with the argument of expediency, he would consider the
proposition of his right honourable friend Mr. Dundas; that, on account of
some patrimonial rights of the West Indians, the prohibition of the
Slave-trade would be an invasion of their legal inheritance. He would first
observe, that, if this argument was worth any thing, it applied just as
much to gradual as to immediate abolition. He had no doubt, that, at
whatever pe