s act. But no
one of the occasions, on which it grounded its proceedings, now existed. He
would plead, then, the act itself as an argument for the abolition. If it
had been proved that, instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain,
it was the most destructive to her interests--that it was the ruin of her
seamen--that it stopped the extension of her manufactures;--if it had been
proved, in the second place, that it was not now necessary for the supply
of our Plantations with Negros;--if it had been further established, that
it was from the beginning contrary to the first principles of justice, and
consequently that a pledge for its continuance, had one been attempted to
be given, must have been absolutely void--where in this act of parliament
was the contract to be found, by which Britain was bound, as she was said
to be, never to listen to her own true interests and to the cries of the
natives of Africa? Was it not clear, that all argument, founded on the
supposed pledge of Parliament, made against those who employed it?

But if we were not bound by existing laws to the support of this trade, we
were doubly criminal in pursuing it: for why ought it to be abolished at
all? Because it was incurable injustice. Africa was the ground, on which he
chiefly rested; and there it was, that his two honourable friends, one of
whom had proposed gradual abolition, and the other regulation, did not
carry their principles to their full extent. Both had confessed the trade
to be a moral evil. How much stronger then was the argument for immediate
than for gradual abolition! If on the ground of a moral evil it was to be
abolished at last, why ought it not now? Why was injustice to be suffered
to remain for a single hour? He knew of no evil, which ever had existed,
nor could he imagine any to exist, worse than the tearing of eighty
thousand persons annually from their native land, by a combination of the
most civilized nations, in the most enlightened quarter of the globe; but
more especially by that nation, which called herself the most free and the
most happy of them all.

He would now notice the objection, that other nations would not give up the
Slave-trade, if we were to renounce it. But if the trade were stained but
by a thousandth part of the criminality, which he and others, after a
thorough investigation of the subject, charged upon it, the House ought
immediately to vote its abolition. This miserable argument, if persevered