no other view than to throw a veil
over their odious system. Among these was--their right to import labourers.
But never was the word "labourers" so prostituted, as when it was used for
slaves. Never was the word "right" so prostituted, not even when The Rights
of Man were talked of, as when the right to trade in man's blood was
asserted by the members of an enlightened assembly. Never was the right of
importing these labourers worse defended than when the antiquity of the
Slave-trade, and its foundation on antient acts of parliament, were brought
forward in its support. We had been cautioned not to lay our unhallowed
hands on the antient institution of the Slave-trade; nor to subvert a
fabric, raised by the wisdom of our ancestors, and consecrated by a lapse
of ages. But on what principles did we usually respect the institutions of
antiquity? We respected them when we saw some shadow of departed worth and
usefulness; or some memorial of what had been creditable to mankind. But
was this the case with the Slave-trade? Had it begun in principles of
justice or national honour, which the changes of the world alone had
impaired? had it to plead former services and glories in behalf of its
present disgrace? In looking at it we saw nothing but crimes and sufferings
from the beginning--nothing but what wounded and convulsed our
feelings--nothing but what excited indignation and horror. It had not even
to plead what could often be said in favour of the most unjustifiable wars.
Though conquest had sometimes originated in ambition, and in the worst of
motives, yet the conquerors and the conquered were sometimes blended
afterwards into one people; so that a system of common interest arose out
of former differences. But where was the analogy of the cases? Was it only
at the outset that we could trace violence and injustice on the part of the
Slave-trade? Were the oppressors and the oppressed so reconciled, that
enmities ultimately ceased?--No. Was it reasonable then to urge a
prescriptive right, not to the fruits of an antient and forgotten evil, but
to a series of new violences; to a chain of fresh enormities; to cruelties
continually repeated; and of which every instance inflicted a fresh
calamity, and constituted a separate and substantial crime?

The debate being over, the House divided; when it appeared that there were
for Mr. Wilberforce's motion seventy-four, but against it eighty-two.

The motion for the general abolition of